Twitter addiction is a new form of addiction introduced at the beginning of the 21st century when the popular social networking platform, Twitter, captured the minds of the masses. It’s great fun to tweet. At the same time, tweeting can also be quite addictive. It’s, therefore, imperative to strike a balance between effective tweeting and overcoming urges to over-tweet.
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Like any form of addiction, as mentioned in the book, Where Did Time Fly, addictions usually arise due to a feeling of emptiness in the absence of the addiction as we try to cling to something that is lacking in our lives. The addiction helps to make us tense such that we are not worried about other more worrying matters, or for the purpose of trying to attain what we want, such as making us feel more loved, for example. A lot of the time, people also replace one addiction with another addiction. That also does not help matters. The best way to cure any addiction or addictive mindset, including a Twitter addiction, therefore, is to release the tense yearning as you tweet, when performing any other task, or just when existing in your daily lives. It’s important to release the tension, to release the excessive longing for what is lacking in your daily lives, and to give yourself exactly what you are longing for instead of an external manifestation of that yearning. Buddhist philosophy is one of the cornerstone philosophies on the planet that has beautifully encapsulated and explained these concepts.
Although Twitter does allow people to more effectively engage with each other on hot topics and in real time, it does have an effect of preventing people from seeing the forest for the trees, as the old adage goes. You may therefore want to consider not tweeting a new tweet the moment that you feel that you must tweet about it. Perhaps tweet 1 in every 5 chirps that pop into your head. Alternatively, wait one day from the time that you had wanted to chirp to tweet it the next day. You will probably find that you may only want to tweet about half as much the next day as you did the previous day.
Also, try to just spend some quiet time by yourself, as Where Did Time Fly also suggests. In this age of relentless bombardment of information from the high-tech internet age, sometimes, it’s good to have quiet time to allow your mind to think through thoughts in your day.