There are people who hate Twitter, and there are people who also hate themselves for using it anyway. I’m the second kind. Maybe everyone who uses the service is now. It doesn’t have to be Twitter, either. For you it might be Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever other app that was built to farm your attention and now successfully reaps it abundantly.
For me, the loathing is multiple. First, there’s the compulsion of loading the app at all: of flicking its infinite scroll whenever I’m idle, even just briefly—at a stoplight, in front of the microwave, in the bathroom. Then there are the things I see there: the angry or bitter or stupid posts that make me angry or bitter or stupid in turn. And the things I share on the service, too: things I regret, or come close enough to posting to produce a phantom guilt that feels equally bad.
Time after time, I’ve resolved to do something. I delete the app from my phone regularly, only to reinstall it, sometimes the very same day. I’ve considered deleting my account, but I never follow through, for fear of losing the hypothetical value of whatever platform I have built there. So a few months ago, I pursued what seemed like a promising compromise: Apple Screen Time, the iPhone feature that lets you set up a daily time limit for any app (or category of apps) you choose.
Screen Time has been around for a while, supposedly allowing iPhone users to “make more informed decisions” about how they use their devices. I’ve mostly ignored it, but disgust at my own attachment to the device led me to give ..
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