How I staved off brain rot: Kicking my Twitter addiction

In 2006, an American gent called Jack Dorsey started a website where you could share short messages. Called Twitter, the social media website would go on to change the world – and especially journalism.

Now called X, Twitter’s incredibly real-time nature and the fact that newsmakers use it heavily to reach their audiences means it has become indispensable to journalists. In fact, it is hard to be a journalist today without being on the platform.

As indispensable as it is though, for me Twitter became too much of a good thing. I have always been a news junkie and a platform like Twitter was like letting an alcoholic into the wine cellar. I became drunk – on the news and the debates around it. While commuting, in bed, on the pot – you name it, I had the Twitter app open and was reading every bit of news that every place in the world produced.

Did it do me any good? It did in fact. Twitter is a rare social media platform which, when used well, can increase knowledge. But in excess, it was clearly producing brain rot. There was too much news, too much information. I could see my circuits getting fried.

For this year, I stepped...

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