Recently I realized that I’d not been active much on social media for a while, and to my surprise I didn’t miss it. When Musk began to ruin Twitter in earnest I decided to move to Mastodon. In the beginning I missed the lively discussions, the interactions, and the inspirations the larger social bubble afforded on Twitter. Mastodon just wasn’t the same. But so was Twitter, it no longer was the Twitter I liked. Back then I wrote:

In the first few weeks of Musk’s Twitter, I felt like someone bulldozed my favorite playground from my childhood. I will never be able to go back there again, but I found a new and better place: Mastodon. — [2023-02-10 Twitter a Snapshot](“Twitter: A Snapsho”)

Well, I was wrong. Most of the people I enjoyed reading on Twitter never showed up on Mastodon and the social media bubble I so much enjoyed had burst. Still, my timeline on Mastodon was very enjoyable and engaging, but recently it has been getting very quiet. Scrolling through my timeline didn’t feel engaging or interesting anymore and I noticed that I unconsciously reduced my daily time on social media in the past weeks—drastically:

My Screen Time showed about 3.5 hours per day on Ivory (a Mastodon app) a few weeks ago, then 2.5 a week later, 1 hour last week, and this week my daily average so far is 20 minutes. This decline started around the time BlueSky^[1] started to let more people join their beta. I’m not yet on BlueSky.

First of all, I think this decline is good; 3.5 hours per day on any social media network feels very unhealthy. Thank you Musk for ruining Twitter, thank you BlueSky for sucking all the oxygen out of the room before letting me join.

What’s next?

During the Twitter exodus, the people I care about scattered throughout the social media landscape. Smaller groups formed, but none are as lively as my social bubble was on Twitter. I could, of course, make accounts and install the apps for all the places the people I care about went to. I could try to be everywhere, and connect with everyone, all the time, but that thought alone is enough to make me feel stressed. I want one place to connect with people I like. That place used to be Twitter, and there is no such place right now.

I used to believe Mastodon would be the new Twitter, but now I’m convinced I was wrong. I think BlueSky will become the most popular destination for Twitter refugees. Too many people find Mastodon too hard to use, and the lack of an algorithm makes it overall less attractive than algorithm-driven platforms.^[2]

But there is one more thing that I think might be happening—and I am well aware that I am probably very biased on this at this moment. I suspect a lot of those who leave Twitter will take the opportunity to stop using social media altogether. I can’t blame them; I’ve been feeling a lot better with less social media in my life lately. So much so that I doubt I will ever again become as active on social media as I used to be before Twitter died.

I could go on endlessly here, but I think the main point I want to make to end this post is this: I think the short-form social media post is both extremely alluring but also surprisingly harmful. I've long felt like tweets negatively impacted our attention span and our ability to comprehend long-form content, especially more complex content. I think everybody who feels like they're no longer at home on any social platform should consider themselves lucky. After the initial pain of social media withdrawal, I feel lucky there is no social media out there I feel tempted by anymore.

⌞w⌝