Out of the loop: The pros and cons of self-imposed social media exile

Image from DesignReviver.

I haven't been following my Twitter stream for about a week now. I mean, I've popped in and out, made a few @tweets and replies, followed a few links. But for the most part I haven't checked it as regularly as I had in weeks and months prior.

This isn't new behavior for me, and possibly not even the longest stretch I've taken myself out of the loop. But I had a thought this morning as I filled my coffee mug at work (relevant in that so much of what I follow now is work-related, either directly or tangentially):

Not following Twitter is both liberating and alienating.

Liberating in that I'm not obsessively grasping for my phone, or acting on the compulsion to click the browser tab everytime I see "(x)" in the tab title to indicate how many new tweets have poured in since I last looked.

Alienating in that I feel like I'm not really up on what's going down.

Twitter is really my only social media tool of choice right now (not counting this blog, my other blog, and my phlog), but I suspect this statement is true for any SM platform.

A final thought: Social media platforms and tools make it incredibly easy to stay in touch, yes, but they also make "social networking" an often exhausting process (at least for me). As someone who really values social relationships that are natural, comfortable, relaxed, and not exhausting to maintain, I wonder sometimes why I bother with this relationship with technology/social media/online social networking.