You certainly know that Twitter has reached critical mass when the BBC begins analyzing the lives and habits of people using it, to see how they differ from others. Of course, when the news was given that the enterprise that Biz Stone began is now in the black, that is a sign it has more than caught on.
Hey, I’ve changed too. I haven’t made any cracks about it in a few weeks. It does appear that the idea itself is not nearly as silly as some of the people who use it. Of course that is similar to many other things in life.
But imagine the lives of Twitter users being analyzed. That means some real science is happening, whether anyone wants to acknowledge or not.
Knowing me, knowing you… BBC reporters Zoe Kleinman and Carolyn Rice swapped social networking lives for 24 hours.
“I’m not anti-Twitter, I just don’t really understand it,” said Carolyn Rice, accompanied by the sound of my jaw dropping to the floor.
I have 2,149 (and counting) “tweets” – individual messages no longer than 140 characters long – under my belt, but I have never questioned whether I understand it. I just do it. Every day, probably every hour.
I use a smartphone application to post tweets to the Twitter website from my mobile when I’m on the move. I tweet about what I’m working on and what I get up to outside of work. Sometimes I even tweet about my lunch, if it’s exceptionally good or bad.
Carolyn, meanwhile, last logged on to Twitter ten months ago.
Twitter addiction
Does that make me an addict? Psychologist Dr Rob Yeung from Talentspace thinks the term is a little strong.
“The definition of addiction is something that causes detriment to other areas of your life,” he said. “It’s not about the number of hours spent doing it.”
I don’t think it’s ruining my career or my relationships – although popstar Lily Allen famously gave up on social networking after a dinner party at which she realised she spent more time updating Twitter than interacting with her companions.
Nonetheless, Carolyn and I decided that maybe it was time Twitter and I took a break from each other, while Twitter and Carolyn got reacquainted.
We agreed that for 24 hours she would look after my Twitter feed, while I completely removed myself from it.
The experiment covers things that can happen, such as information overload, or the sudden fear of isolation when the Twitter feed is taken away.
Certainly anyone that has lost the internet connection (for whatever reason) can identify with that unexplainable loss we feel, though 20 years ago it would have seemed totally inane. The amount of connectivity we have one one hand brings us so close together, yet in many other ways isolates us. Some people who might consider themselves great friends online would never look twice at each other on the street, unless they had had use of a net cam during the online time.
What have we done? We at once make friends, yet isolate ourselves from “the real world” we are getting further from knowing. It would be very telling, I believe, to get some statistics on agoraphobia over the last 20 years.
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