Twitter: app or obsession?

Long gone are the days when we would socialise with our friends by doing something fun, something playful and exciting. In the modern day social media controls our lives and it also has the power to control our minds. Children, teens and adults obsess over the recent phenomenon. It becomes a part of our lifestyle, it definitely has become part of mine.

A few days ago I was hosting my radio show when I realised that Twitter was down. Sadly, my life came to a weird pause. I looked at my friend, mortified. My timeline wouldn’t refresh, my messages wouldn’t deliver and none of my posts would upload. It wasn’t one of those moments where you just sigh and give up, I kept trying but it was wishful thinking; I tried rebooting my phone and re-downloading the app before eventually coming to the gutting realisation that it was true, Twitter really wasn’t working. It felt like the end of an era. I felt a fear of missing out. I couldn’t keep up to date with my timeline, nor gather the latest news and gossip and most importantly, I couldn’t be the first person to retweet Kim Kardashian’s latest selfie.

We felt a moment of crisis, I looked at her and simply asked: “What are we going to do?”. It’s our source of information, the way in which we interact with our audience. After announcing it on the show, we soon came to the realisation that this was all our listeners were interested in. 

It’s sad to admit that we are obsessed with social media. Access to this new world is a form of escapism, allowing us to be whoever we choose. A place where you can say things you wouldn’t usually say, and interact with people you wouldn’t usually interact with. Twitter is a place to present your ‘ideal self’ where this may not be the case in reality. People use social media to vent their anger, and to portray their success. We live in a world where going viral on social media is one’s biggest accomplishment, where likes and retweets add to our self-worth. Its shocking really, all of this effort we put into the way we appear in a virtual world.

It would be interesting to set a challenge: could you go without Twitter for one week only to discover how social media dependant you really are?

Kayleigh Brookfield