Quitting Twitter? What People Say About Life After Social Media
How does it feel to flee from the feeds? Mostly worth it, say people who ditched Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
4 min
When Twitter Inc. accepted Elon Musk’s $61 billion offer to buy the social-media company, many frequent tweeters vowed to deactivate their accounts. For a while, it seemed like everyone on Twitter was talking about quitting Twitter.
Not too long ago, people said they would flee Instagram. Before that, it was Facebook.
With every social-media controversy, people talk about shutting down their accounts forever. Few actually do it. Roughly 70% of Americans used social media in 2021, a level that remained steady for five years, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Meta Platforms Inc. in February reported Facebook’s daily active users fell for the first time in at least a decade, but it said Wednesday that population was growing again.
Social-media apps are crafted to keep people coming back. The dopamine rush that comes from other people’s likes can leave you feeling celebratory. But there is a downside. The constant exposure to other people’s lives can hurt your body image, sleep, anxiety levels and productivity.
“Those feelings drive people to consider how much time, if any, they want to spend on social media,” said Kate Rosenblatt, senior clinical manager at Talkspace, an online therapy company.
Many people who have left Twitter, Facebook and Instagram say they are happier because of it, but they also realized they miss some things. Here is what they want others to know—both the good and the bad.
Withdrawal fades quickly.
When you’re used to checking an app every day, or multiple times a day, you sometimes mindlessly open the app and scroll through your feed.
“I was so sucked into the negative memes, clapbacks and spirals of conflict I saw on Twitter that when I first left, my muscle memory told me to open the app and start scrolling,” said Kimberly Katiti, a 28-year-old artist in North Hollywood, Calif., who quit the platform in April 2021.
“I got over that within a week,” she said. “I would just put my phone away. And before I knew it, I wasn’t getting the urge to scroll and see what’s happening in the world.”
You’re still connected to the world.
Social media started as a way to connect with friends, but the platforms evolved to become places for companies and people to share news and politics—Mr. Musk called Twitter the world’s “de facto town square.” But with that increased role came misinformation and other issues. Cutting social media out of your life may nudge you to find other sources for news. And just because you’re not on Facebook doesn’t mean you’ll miss big cultural moments and trends.
“I got on Twitter in 2008 because it was a different and newer communication method,” said Christopher Britton, a 34-year-old who runs a marketing business in Inlet Beach, Fla. “At the time, I worried about not being so-called relevant.” He deleted his Twitter account in 2011, and now keeps informed via Reddit, Apple News and other sources.
“And my Messages app is just as good as any social-networking site when keeping in contact with people I know,” Mr. Britton said.
People are nicer.
You don’t have to be on social media for long to encounter Facebook rants or Twitter feuds where people you know communicate differently than they do in person. When you no longer see those posts and instead interact with people in real life, your views can change.
“It’s so much easier to post rude stuff when you’re behind a keyboard wall,” said J.J. Garcia, a 54-year-old business analyst in New Braunfels, Texas. “But in person, your neighbors seem less inclined to talk about that stuff. And you can get along with them better when you’re not seeing all their opinions online.”
You might have trouble sending or donating money.
On Facebook, you can add your payment information to buy and sell items on Marketplace, send money to family on Messenger and donate directly to causes. Leaving Facebook can make that more cumbersome, said Bobby Buchler, a 57-year-old retired high-school teacher from Las Vegas who ditched the social network in 2019.
“On Twitter, I follow organizations that rescue dogs. And they make posts saying to donate on Facebook, or they link to a post made on Facebook,” Mr. Buchler said. “But I can’t easily check it because I don’t want to go on Facebook.”
People don’t miss you—or remember your birthday.
Kristen Womack was active on Facebook and Instagram, running groups, sharing articles and operating a small-business account. But when she left Facebook in 2016 and Instagram in 2020, no one seemed to notice.
“Not one single person said, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t see you on Facebook or Instagram anymore. I miss you,’” said Ms. Womack, a 42-year-old product manager at Microsoft Corp. in Minneapolis. “Once you leave the party, it’s like you’re not missed.”
And those birthday reminders and comments on your Facebook wall? Say goodbye to them. Though doing so may not be a bad thing.
“On Facebook on my birthday, 300 people would pop up, and then you have to respond and like comments from random people,” said Verlin Campbell, a 42-year-old IT project manager in Los Angeles. “Now my interactions are more genuine. On my birthday, like 20 people texted me. I’m happier with that.”
You feel more productive.
Leaving social media gives you more free time—sometimes more than you know what to do with.
“I was surprised to realize just how much time I wasted on scrolling. You hop on your computer to write, and it’s easy to get sidetracked,” said Lindsey Zitzmann. The 39-year-old online life coach in Villard, Minn., quit Instagram in 2020.
“Now, in those in-between times when I have a few minutes, I read books, I’m more present with family, or I’ll cook without picking up my phone,” she added.
Friends drift away.
Social media can make you feel like you’re in touch with people just because you double-tapped a post, or because someone commented on one of your photos. Once you leave, some of those relationships fade.
“It makes me sad to think about it,” said Oliver Murray, 18, of Fayetteville, Ark. The freelance digital artist says he lost contact with some online friends when he deleted his Instagram account in 2019. He now shares his artwork on Tumblr and Twitter, where he doesn’t feel pressure to post constantly.
“I got annoyed with all the superficial vanity posts,” he said. “The only way I’ll go back to Instagram is if Elon Musk ruins Twitter.”
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: May 5, 2022.
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Competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors
4 min
China rocked the auto world twice this year. First, its electric vehicles stunned Western rivals at the Shanghai auto show with their quality, features and price. Then came reports that in the first quarter of 2023 it dethroned Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.
How is China in contention to lead the world’s most lucrative and prestigious consumer goods market, one long dominated by American, European, Japanese and South Korean nameplates? The answer is a unique combination of industrial policy, protectionism and homegrown competitive dynamism. Western policy makers and business leaders are better prepared for the first two than the third.
Start with industrial policy—the use of government resources to help favoured sectors. China has practiced industrial policy for decades. While it’s finding increased favour even in the U.S., the concept remains controversial. Governments have a poor record of identifying winning technologies and often end up subsidising inferior and wasteful capacity, including in China.
But in the case of EVs, Chinese industrial policy had a couple of things going for it. First, governments around the world saw climate change as an enduring threat that would require decade-long interventions to transition away from fossil fuels. China bet correctly that in transportation, the transition would favour electric vehicles.
In 2009, China started handing out generous subsidies to buyers of EVs. Public procurement of taxis and buses was targeted to electric vehicles, rechargers were subsidised, and provincial governments stumped up capital for lithium mining and refining for EV batteries. In 2020 NIO, at the time an aspiring challenger to Tesla, avoided bankruptcy thanks to a government-led bailout.
While industrial policy guaranteed a demand for EVs, protectionism ensured those EVs would be made in China, by Chinese companies. To qualify for subsidies, cars had to be domestically made, although foreign brands did qualify. They also had to have batteries made by Chinese companies, giving Chinese national champions like Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD an advantage over then-market leaders from Japan and South Korea.
To sell in China, foreign automakers had to abide by conditions intended to upgrade the local industry’s skills. State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group developed the manufacturing know-how necessary to become a player in EVs thanks to joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Despite all that government support, sales of EVs remained weak until 2019, when China let Tesla open a wholly owned factory in Shanghai. “It took this catalyst…to boost interest and increase the level of competitiveness of the local Chinese makers,” said Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a research service specialising in the Chinese auto industry.
Back in 2011 Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, explained what set Chinese capitalism apart from its American counterpart. “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share,” he said, according to Fast Company, a technology magazine. “In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Thanks to that competition and focus on execution, the EV industry went from a niche industrial-policy project to a sprawling ecosystem of predominantly private companies. Much of this happened below the Western radar while China was cut off from the world because of Covid-19 restrictions.
When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”
Manufacturers of gasoline cars are product-oriented, whereas EV manufacturers, like tech companies, are user-oriented, Le said. Chinese EVs feature at least two, often three, display screens, one suitable for watching movies from the back seat, multiple lidars (laser-based sensors) for driver assistance, and even a microphone for karaoke (quickly copied by Tesla). Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers such as CATL have gone from laggard to leader.
Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.
Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”
Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers. Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness centre.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
