I quit Twitter for a month and it changed my thinking about mostly everything.
I logged out of Hacker News for a month recently, and also part of the time out of Twitter and Facebook. I was still allowed to read HN, just not to comment, as the latter tends to waste the most time.<p>What I have come to feel is that my use of the internet is mostly driven by rage - and it seems to be similar for a lot of people. On HN I waste time trying to correct people who will never in a million years be swayed by a random internet comment.<p>On Twitter the problem for me is not the noise - it is being able to rant at any given time. Whenever something upsets me, I can immediately tweet about it, which will amplify the emotions. The better alternative is to simply not get upset about things so much.<p>Being logged out really helped a lot, because sometimes the urge to correct was really strong. Obviously it is the strongest when reading the wrongest opinions, which are also held by people the least likely to change their opinion. Double waste of time.<p>Edit: I don't just rant on my Twitter account, but ranting is the most wasteful use of my time, hence the emphasis.