Why I left Twitter
It has to do with health, kind of!
Welcome to Not a Doctor. I’m Melody Schreiber, a journalist and the editor of What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories About Premature Birth. I’m not a doctor, or a scientist, or really an expert of any kind. I just like to ask questions and try to find the answers to them.
This might not seem related to health or science, but bear with me. Today, I want to talk about Twitter, and why leaving it was the best thing I've done for my mental health in a long time.
Twitter has been a major force in my life. It has introduced me to some of my closest friends, both those who have remained online friends and those with whom I’ve shared really lovely experiences in real life.
While I don’t think Twitter had a direct effect on my career — I would still be writing even if I weren’t on the platform — it was a valuable source of news and a gathering place for other journalists, including freelancers who generously shared their expertise in navigating an opaque industry.
Yet I knew for a long time that I needed to pull back. I spent too much of my working time there, and I found myself with “scroller’s brain” — an addiction, for lack of a better term, to the stimulus offered on Twitter. That is bad enough for anyone whose work requires some level of focus.
Image: Pete Simon
But in the past year or so, the feedback I’ve gotten from Twitter has also grown much more negative. I’ve been harassed, online and in real life, because of what I write, and Twitter has often greatly amplified the harassment. Twitter began to feel not like a water cooler with colleagues sharing news and advice and jokes, but a garden hose of abuse that often hit me when I least expected it.
Over time, the harassment became deeply embedded in my psyche. I hate to give power to internet trolls, but I found myself wondering if they were right — if I was useless, stupid, untalented, ugly, actively hurting people. When you hear something often enough, it works its way into your mind, even when you don’t want it to. That’s why trolls do this, because they know the power of the deluge. While it wasn’t enough to stop me from doing my work entirely, it did make my work much more unpleasant and time-consuming, and it crept into my personal life and the ways I saw myself.
🌡 🌡 🌡
In 2022, when Elon Musk purchased Twitter, I expected a shitshow. I’ve watched for years as allegations have mounted against him: safety violations at his company that left employees wounded or dead; heartlessness toward his ex-wife and children; sexual harassment of employees, journalists, and others; intellectual property theft. It seemed clear to me that he would likely wreak the same havoc at Twitter. But even I didn’t expect the change to be so drastic in such a short amount of time.
Even so, or perhaps because of that, I stayed at first. Who isn’t spellbound by chaos?
But then two things happened.
The first was when Musk implemented a pay-to-play system, the revamped Twitter Blue, where users pay to have their accounts verified and their tweets prioritized. I wrote for the Guardian about the immediate rise in misinformation because of this new system, and the potential for even greater harm. Then, Musk reinstated banned users with long histories of dangerous behavior.
Harassment on the site was bad enough when there were moderators and the worst actors were punished for violating the code of conduct. But what would happen once basically all the moderators were gone, and the worst people were back, with the ability to amplify hateful and dangerous rhetoric even more than before?
The second reason may seem unrelated to Twitter, but this was the reason I finally abandoned the site: the Club Q shooting.
In its wake, I read countless news stories and absorbed the details — not out of some obsessive voyeurism, and not to try to understand the unintelligible, but because I felt a deep need to internalize the danger.
It is not safe for queer people in this country. I am protected by many other parts of my identity: I’m queer but I'm also white, cisgender, married to a man, and in decent financial shape. Many of my peers are not, and they face greater risks because of persistent stigma, fear, and hatred. New laws are being introduced in the U.S. to target trans people, in particular -- a horrifying and dangerous infringement of human rights.
The shooting at Club Q was a violation of a refuge — sometimes, the only refuge — where people can feel free to be who they really are. To say that it hurt isn’t right. It was an ache of grief, a loss.
It's not news that queer people are targeted for who they are, in the places where they gather. But each time is a sharp reminder that sometimes the spaces that bring us the most respite, the places we go to relax and meet new friends and learn about ourselves and each other, can be the very places where we are most vulnerable to harm.
When it came to Twitter, I could see the direction it was speeding toward, and I simply lost my appetite for it. I didn’t need yet another place that felt dangerous to enter.
🌡 🌡 🌡
I’ve kept my account open, mainly so no one steals my handle, and I still check it every now and again to see if I have any direct messages. I’ll sometimes log on to tweet about stories I’ve written and then immediately log off, but even that doesn’t feel worth it. On the days where I log in, I feel an instant flare in anxiety that can last all day. If there’s a lot of harassment, it can last for several days.
But when I’ve been off Twitter, my anxiety is better managed than it has been in years. I’m working on regaining my long focus, too — my ability to work without constantly distracting myself. I’ve tried to replicate, to some degree, the communities I enjoyed on Discord, Slack, Instagram, Mastodon, and, you know, real life.
It feels weird, and sometimes I worry that I’ll fall too far out of the loop on the latest news. But overall, it feels really, really good.
🌡 🌡 🌡
I hope this hasn’t been too long or self-indulgent. And I hope you’re able to find respite wherever you feel safe and supported. As always, friends, please leave a comment or email me (melodyaschreiber@gmail.com) if you have any questions or thoughts.
If you liked this post, don’t forget to hit the little heart below. And if you know someone who might appreciate this newsletter, please forward it to them!