Why this Ottawa lawyer is quitting social media
'I was really sick of eating crap on Twitter,' says Mark Bourrie
After more than 28,000 tweets, Mark Bourrie decided he'd had enough.
On New Year's Eve, the Ottawa lawyer pinned a tweet to the top of his Twitter page, informing his 4,000-plus followers of his resolution to close all his social media accounts.
"[It was] partly for the sake of my own mind," Bourrie told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Friday.
"Partly as an exercise in self-discipline, partly because I begrudge the time. It sucks up a huge amount of my time."
While he'd considered leaving Twitter in the past, Bourrie said he really started contemplating the move in earnest in the fall of 2018, with the U.S. mid-term elections in full swing and the Canadian federal election looming.
The discourse, he said, had become "insulting and negative." Bourrie began to ask himself if he felt better after he logged off social media than he did before — and it became clear he didn't.
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"I was really seeing myself coming off it angry or bummed out or just thinking, like, 'Ick!'" Bourrie said. "There's a lot of big 'ick' factors on Twitter."
'A lot of crap out there'
While there's no scholarly consensus on whether one can truly be addicted to social media, for Bourrie, his dependency on sites like Twitter and Facebook certainly felt like one.
He told Ottawa Morning he would check tweets while doing the laundry, in the washroom, and even in court.
"I quit cigarette smoking years ago, so I know what it feels like to come through a tough addiction. I'd say this one's up around coffee," Bourrie said.
And like a former smoker who feels compelled to hold a cigarette between their fingers, Bourrie said it's been hard to let go of his smartphone.
Still, he's vowing to do his best stay off Twitter — and speaking publicly about that decision, he said, is his way of burning his social media bridges.
"I think people have to look at their media diet the way they look at the way they eat. There's a lot of crap out there," Bourrie said. "And I was really sick of eating crap on Twitter."
Are you planning to cut down on using social media in 2019? Let us know by getting in touch with us — somewhat ironically — on Twitter.