I know, right? The only time I encounter Twitter is when others link me to it. I’m okay with that and sometimes I share forward, but I’m not fed a daily stream of tweets. I left google services a few months ago. It was a long weekend of work, but I’m happier than I was before with otherwise no noticeable impact (except the emails that write themselves for you in gmail). I exported all my data from Facebook around the same time but I’m still mulling over how to resolve deleting 10 years of my digital life against my core principle that things I’ve said and done should not be allowed to disappear even if my 30 years future self would look back in disgust.
A lot of people don't really have this option since their audience is on twitter. Many artists would lose basically their entire livelihood if they just stopped using twitter and stopped being able to communicate about their work. You may have this option but it's not true for everybody.
My daughter is in a youth choir, whose director insists on communicating with parents via their Facebook page, which is of course not publicly viewable. I have told her that I will not join Facebook solely to be able to read communications from her. I offered her my phone number and email address, and so now for important things she will send an email as well. But she was absolutely incredulous that someone was not on Facebook in this day and age, and was not interested in joining.
GP: I’m convinced this is how people with poor email management skills feel. It’s how I felt until I stepped up my filter, unsubscribe, and delete game and really developed a strategy for managing my inbox. It’s not heavyweight but the goal is to reduce your inbox to a task/todo list of sorts—only the things you need to worry about. Might be a direct inquiry or a notification about an upcoming sale, etc. Eventually you get to a point where you realize that _everything_ uses email. The internet _is_ email. It’s just really easy to end up being bombarded by so much of it that it feels useless.
Many people don't use facebook. I thinks WhatsApp is a better example, it's even more ubiquitous, though I'm sure there are still people who don't use it. Heck, I'm personally thinking of stopping, it's just that everyone is there. Two of my recent orders were negotiated by WhatsApp. It's used almost universally.
I think that depends on what country you're in. The only people I know who are on whatsapp are immigrants who use it to talk to family in the old country.
Not using twitter/facebook/google/etc doesn't exempt you from experiencing the negative effect they have on the internet and the world around you, though.
