Here's why:
It fulfills that basic need of all humans - to connect, to feel appreciated. That's the Big Idea with all social sites.
Why twitter succeeds in particular is because here, that Idea comes in small convenient packets that you can open anytime you want, with optional anonymity and the ability to quietly observe (if you don't feel like talking, just keep quite and observe - a luxury not afforded in real life). The cost of getting invested is very low and the returns are high.So it becomes easy to get hooked.
Add to that the constantly updated (if you follow the right people) information, the followers, the stars, RTs, trophies, mentions, display pictures, instagrams - so many ways to get validated and be heard! It's like being on a pulse intravenous dopamine drip. And you quickly develop tachyphylaxis to it.
I'm not in a position to judge the medium, since my experience with it is limited. These are observations. A lot of the pros and cons of the medium have to do with the user. Nurses and drug-addicts both use needles - to entirely different purposes. Cannot blame needles now, can we? I wouldn't blame twitter either.
One advantage to twitter is that you meet great people you otherwise might never have met (although there is no way to verify this). I definitely did meet and became friends with some great people and I'm happy and grateful for that.
To play the devil's advocate and be entirely objective for a moment however, what are the costs of making these connections? In terms of time, lost productivity, lost growth, lost ideas, actions you could've taken? And how real are these connections anyway? Perhaps the time I spent in connecting with anonymous people on twitter could've been better spent in connecting with people in real life? The latter is tougher but is it better? For every wonderful person I meet on twitter, who's to say there isn't another wonderful person I'm missing out in real life? and what if the latter relationship is more likely to be better for me in the long term?
There are people who use twitter in a very disciplined manner, for specific purposes and with specific objectives in mind. And more importantly, with time limits. I wonder how many of them are there, though. I suspect most of them are in the 30 -60 age group. It'll be interesting to see, for every such 'power' user, how many twitter addicts one can find and what their characteristics are.
Twitter has impact on real life of course, it's not all virtual. Whether that impact is good or bad, depends on who you ask. This is especially apparent in politics and media.
I'm however more interested in the impact on people's individual lives, on their productivity, on long term satisfaction. If I could, I would love to set up a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of twitter on everyday life. To see how having twitter in a person's life changes their personality and the choices and decisions they make versus those who don't use it.
A worrisome aspect about twitter is this - it is one of the easiest ways to avoid looking at problems in your own life, especially if you are pre-disposed to procrastination and anxiety.. That twitter is merely a distraction, would be an understatement. It helps in task avoidance in much the same way that TV and movies do. However, movies have time limits and with TV, the passive nature of the activity makes you get tired of it relatively early. Twitter on the other hand gives you the illusion of activity, without you doing much. Even if you know it is a sort of passive activity, it is easy to overlook that in the moment since you are interacting with it regularly. To read new tweets, you have to click or refresh, go to other people's profiles, write something, star it, retweet it, think about how you are going to reply to something or how you are going to make your joke sound funnier. There is an insidious passivity to the whole thing since you aren't actually creating something new. You are sharing and reading and expressing, but the 'creation' itself, is just tweets.
Of course, if self expression is valuable to you, spending that time forming and sharing those tweets is worth it. But then we come back again to the point of the costs that you are paying for that ability, the potential for addiction and lost opportunities if any. Also, how valuable is unmitigated, relentless self-expression anyway?
And all this while, you are getting to see and learn things that others have done...the TED talks, the thought catalogs, the brain pickings, blog posts forwarded with a 'briliiant' or 'excellent, must read' thrown in. Since our society places a high premium on these things, your brain can easily tell you that you are getting something valuable for your time spent on twitter.
In that swirl of self-validation, new information, humor, wit, sarcasm, self-expression, sharing and connection I wonder how many people are able to keep a cap on their twitter usage and assess objectively, whether that usage has given them what they wanted.
If you think you use twitter (or other sites) more than you should, perhaps making a list of things that brought value to you in the last couple of years and seeing how many of those come from your time spent on the site, would be a useful exercise.
It fulfills that basic need of all humans - to connect, to feel appreciated. That's the Big Idea with all social sites.
Why twitter succeeds in particular is because here, that Idea comes in small convenient packets that you can open anytime you want, with optional anonymity and the ability to quietly observe (if you don't feel like talking, just keep quite and observe - a luxury not afforded in real life). The cost of getting invested is very low and the returns are high.So it becomes easy to get hooked.
Add to that the constantly updated (if you follow the right people) information, the followers, the stars, RTs, trophies, mentions, display pictures, instagrams - so many ways to get validated and be heard! It's like being on a pulse intravenous dopamine drip. And you quickly develop tachyphylaxis to it.
I'm not in a position to judge the medium, since my experience with it is limited. These are observations. A lot of the pros and cons of the medium have to do with the user. Nurses and drug-addicts both use needles - to entirely different purposes. Cannot blame needles now, can we? I wouldn't blame twitter either.
One advantage to twitter is that you meet great people you otherwise might never have met (although there is no way to verify this). I definitely did meet and became friends with some great people and I'm happy and grateful for that.
To play the devil's advocate and be entirely objective for a moment however, what are the costs of making these connections? In terms of time, lost productivity, lost growth, lost ideas, actions you could've taken? And how real are these connections anyway? Perhaps the time I spent in connecting with anonymous people on twitter could've been better spent in connecting with people in real life? The latter is tougher but is it better? For every wonderful person I meet on twitter, who's to say there isn't another wonderful person I'm missing out in real life? and what if the latter relationship is more likely to be better for me in the long term?
There are people who use twitter in a very disciplined manner, for specific purposes and with specific objectives in mind. And more importantly, with time limits. I wonder how many of them are there, though. I suspect most of them are in the 30 -60 age group. It'll be interesting to see, for every such 'power' user, how many twitter addicts one can find and what their characteristics are.
Twitter has impact on real life of course, it's not all virtual. Whether that impact is good or bad, depends on who you ask. This is especially apparent in politics and media.
I'm however more interested in the impact on people's individual lives, on their productivity, on long term satisfaction. If I could, I would love to set up a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of twitter on everyday life. To see how having twitter in a person's life changes their personality and the choices and decisions they make versus those who don't use it.
A worrisome aspect about twitter is this - it is one of the easiest ways to avoid looking at problems in your own life, especially if you are pre-disposed to procrastination and anxiety.. That twitter is merely a distraction, would be an understatement. It helps in task avoidance in much the same way that TV and movies do. However, movies have time limits and with TV, the passive nature of the activity makes you get tired of it relatively early. Twitter on the other hand gives you the illusion of activity, without you doing much. Even if you know it is a sort of passive activity, it is easy to overlook that in the moment since you are interacting with it regularly. To read new tweets, you have to click or refresh, go to other people's profiles, write something, star it, retweet it, think about how you are going to reply to something or how you are going to make your joke sound funnier. There is an insidious passivity to the whole thing since you aren't actually creating something new. You are sharing and reading and expressing, but the 'creation' itself, is just tweets.
Of course, if self expression is valuable to you, spending that time forming and sharing those tweets is worth it. But then we come back again to the point of the costs that you are paying for that ability, the potential for addiction and lost opportunities if any. Also, how valuable is unmitigated, relentless self-expression anyway?
And all this while, you are getting to see and learn things that others have done...the TED talks, the thought catalogs, the brain pickings, blog posts forwarded with a 'briliiant' or 'excellent, must read' thrown in. Since our society places a high premium on these things, your brain can easily tell you that you are getting something valuable for your time spent on twitter.
In that swirl of self-validation, new information, humor, wit, sarcasm, self-expression, sharing and connection I wonder how many people are able to keep a cap on their twitter usage and assess objectively, whether that usage has given them what they wanted.
If you think you use twitter (or other sites) more than you should, perhaps making a list of things that brought value to you in the last couple of years and seeing how many of those come from your time spent on the site, would be a useful exercise.
