Last year I felt unproductive. I wasn’t writing as much as I used to. Nor was I reading as much as in the halcyon days before I finally purchased my first smartphone, in 2012. What I was doing was spending an inordinate amount of time on social media, clicking links and devouring the latest political or cultural hot take and the endless series of hot takes on that hot take.
Don’t get me wrong. I was still logging hours of prep work for my lectures, teaching classes, advising students, and going to countless meetings. And much of my social-media surfing had long worn the disguise of productivity: I could easily crowdsource suggestions for articles and authors for my syllabi, seek out solutions to teaching conundrums, and get recommendations for new books and movies — not to mention connect with fellow scholars by sharing in-jokes about the perils of academe. Maybe it was “positive procrastination” — like doing the laundry before hunkering down to write.
And yet Twitter began to feel like a problem, and not just because it’s been used as a tool of harassment, Russian meddling in American politics, and presidential temper tantrums. Nor because of the way ill-considered tweets have gotten some academics in hot water. As the time until tenure continued to tick by, and I began to miss writing deadlines, I realized that my Twitter habit might derail not only my dreams of attaining tenure but also any hope of being a successful, and prolific, author.
I hesitated only briefly before I hit the button deactivating my account.
We’ve all heard about the effects of multitasking on our ability to process information — both online and off. In my classes, I regularly alert students to research suggesting that reading emails, responding to texts, and checking news feeds leads to poor performance on tasks that require our full attention, temporarily reshaping our cognition so that we’re less capable of deep reading, deliberation, and recall.
In the first few days after leaving Twitter, I felt anxious. I kept opening my phone to check my feed. During down times in my schedule, I mused about what I might be missing and actually found myself feeling a bit lonely. I nearly clicked on a Facebook link to a Twitter essay and felt like a smoker trying to go cold turkey, jonesing for just one puff.
It didn’t help that when I told friends I might go all the way and let Twitter delete my account (Twitter deletes accounts 30 days after deactivation), more than a few of them were firmly against it. Some reminded me that a hiatus would allow me to kick the daily habit and then reactivate my account before my profile was wiped off the servers. A few applauded my decision yet said they couldn’t imagine getting rid of their own accounts, because of the obvious benefits of social networking and reaching a wider audience for their work.
Those benefits go both ways: Twitter also allows a wider range of research to reach you. I could easily follow experts in other fields and subject areas, expanding my storehouse of available information. Twitter can also act as a repository for information, creating a kind of collective memory. That is valuable to scholars in the digital era, when the explosion of new journals, blogs, and websites can make it hard to keep abreast of new articles.
But even though Twitter is searchable, and theoretically every tweet can be cataloged by the Library of Congress (a project that has run into technical difficulties), what does the accumulation of all those pithy sentences and hyperlinks really tell us? Probably not much. Collective memory is prone to the same distortions as regular memory, making it more difficult for us as individuals to correctly recall events. And while I might miss feeling “plugged in,” I realized I wasn’t actually missing out.
In fact, less “information” seemed to mean more information. After a few weeks without Twitter, I was already less distracted. My ability to focus seemed to be inversely related to the volume of my social-media usage throughout the day. Quitting Twitter not only made me more productive — I was reading more articles and writing more words — it also lightened my mood.
What really made me pause and briefly reconsider, however, were the close friends and prolific colleagues who argued that the value of Twitter — the conversations, the ability to “try out arguments” and get immediate feedback — outweigh its drawbacks. Maybe I was limiting my ability to have a voice and secure my own reputation as an expert in my field.
Then I realized that all but one of those colleagues had yet to finish their book manuscripts. Although they churn out a lot of online content, they aren’t productive in ways that are going to ensure their tenure. And so I have to wonder how much of this defense of social media is a bulwark against admitting to their own “productive” procrastination habits.
Maybe there is value in Twitter’s brand of shallow scholarship. But if it gets in the way of focused, deep reading and writing, it’s not worth it. For now, I’m very glad I deleted my account. I may tweet again someday, though. Old procrastination habits are hard to break.
Theresa MacPhail is an assistant professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program at Stevens Institute of Technology.
