My Blackberry vibrated twice, alerting me of an email, Facebook or Twitter notifications. I hesitated to check what was causing that red light to blink. Unfortunately, it was Twitter. Any other time I would have loved to see that little blue bird pop up on my home screen but not this time. Who mentioned me in a tweet? What was it about? What if I’m missing something important? Could a friend tell me who tweeted me, or is that cheating? Not being able to answer these questions made the last nine hours of my two-day “Twitter fast” increasingly difficult.
Two days. Forty-eight hours. Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty minutes. One hundred seventy-two thousand, and eight hundred seconds. That’s how long it took me to realize how much I relied on Twitter.
Habits
I check my Twitter before getting out of bed in the morning, before sleeping at night, while waiting in line, in between classes and when I’m just plain bored. Being incorporated into my daily routine, Twitter is where I almost always find my news. During the fast I imagined I was missing tweets about the Patriots, the Giants and Joe Paterno’s death.
News Source
Twitter is extremely powerful because news that’s tweeted spreads very quickly and to millions of people. Last May USA Today tweeted, “@BarackObama announce that Osama bin Laden is dead,” and that’s where I first learned of the assassination. I didn’t need to wait for the next morning’s newspaper, turn on the television or search for articles online. Twitter was all I needed because there was a constant flow of new information.
Picture from
Mashable article on the internet surpassing traditional media as a preferred
news source.
The Bottom Line
The “Twitter fast” was two days too long, keeping me out of the loop socially and delaying breaking news. How would a "Twitter fast" affect you?
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