Tweets Liked by @raidsrc Across The Years

Histogram component provided by Victory.

I decided to use Twitter likes/favorites as a proxy for Twitter usage. I figure that Twitter does a good job at feeding you timely and relevant tweets, so the tweets you see during a certain time period were probably (mostly) created during that time period. Therefore, if you like a bunch of tweets that were created at a certain time, you probably used Twitter more at that time. A pretty reasonable assumption in my view. I chose likes/favorites over retweets or tweets made because I made this histogram to inspect my own Twitter usage and I never, ever retweet or publish my own tweets.

So, for instance, I liked around 1,300 tweets that were created in the first quarter of 2018. According to my assumption, this would indicate that I spent more time on Twitter in the first quarter of 2018 than I did in the first quarter of 2019, as I've only liked around 800 tweets from the first quarter of 2019. The validity of my conclusion rests on that assumption, but like I said, it seems to be a pretty reasonable assumption to me.

As you can see, I was a Twitter addict during late high school and early college (late 2017 - early 2019), chilled out a bit as college went on (2019 - early 2020), returned to Twitter in full force when lockdown hit because of course I did (mid-2020 - 2021), and am now weaning myself off the constant Twitter usage (late 2021 - 2022).

That massive spike that occurred during the last 3 months of 2020 is crazy. I remember spending straight hours endlessly scrolling on Twitter back then. It matches up with a sharp decline in my mental health that hit me pretty hard during the pandemic. My mental health throughout the entire pandemic was abysmal, but the later months of 2020 were the worst of times. Stuck at home. Bored as hell. Fed up with Zoom university. Especially hated some of the classes I was taking at the time (Organic Chemistry and Software Development in C, disgusting). Tired of arguing with my parents. It's cold and cloudy outside. Days are short and nights are long. It's so dark out all the time. Haven't seen my friends in a while. Generally miserable. Worried about the state of the world. Worried about my own future after I graduate college. And much more. I'm better now, but damn. It was rough back then. You know how when you're depressed, staring at your phone will only make you feel worse? Someone should've told me that back then. I just kept using Twitter, kept doomscrolling, and kept hitting new lows. Big mistake.

I have been actively trying to limit screentime starting from 2021 onward. I've adopted the view that social media doesn't do me any good and that life is better lived offscreen. Unfortunately, this view of mine is nothing but a faraway dream now, since it's impossible to do anything in today's society without staring at screens and using social media. I've been looking for jobs for the last month, and the first thing my friend told me to do was make a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is just social media but for jobs! I can't even search for employment effectively without using social media. But I try to go screenless whenever possible, even if only for a short time. I like saving my eyes and my sanity.