With the use of the internet being especially essential during one of the most isolating years, 2020, users have brought many toxic platforms to attention and consider our use of them. One of these platforms was Twitter which is still a very controversial app and site to this day due to its lack of censorship. It is commonly used by YouTubers, streamers, celebrities, and all those with influence alike in its respective communities, garnering a total of 330 million users worldwide. Many jokes have been spread by those who do and don’t use Twitter about how getting rid of the social media platform all together would bring world peace, but would this be true? Let’s look at Twitter and its impact on modern life. 

To cover the basics of what this platform is, Twitter is a social media platform created on March 21 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in California. At first, it was called Twittr and was used on a podcast sharing app called Odeo to help people send messages to each other. Later they became their corporate entity which is now worth millions of dollars establishing themselves as a large social media platform and have grown to buy other apps like Vines, Breaker, Periscope, Squad, etc.

Some of the benefits that people have seen are the relevant trends that are on the website, interaction with large names, and the varied communities. Twitter is known to have different parts like the study Twitter, Black Twitter, LGBTQ+ Twitter, and more. All of these people from underrepresented groups are simply interested in communicating with each other to learn more about that community and other people in it. It can be a mentally relieving experience to many to find others who go through the same experiences and hardships as you do online. With different communities comes along all different types of people, including influencers and popular figures who also thrive off of the internet. People enjoy being able to retweet and reply to their favorite musicians’ tweets and get thrilled by the chance that they might respond. The trends that are seen on the website are from all different categories, including gaming, world news, politics, sports, and even news about the current pandemic. The trends presented are most of the time accurate to what is current at that moment since most users are very active and send tweets talking about that topic. Overall, Twitter has been seen to be a stage where anyone can say what they want about anything they feel needs to be heard without the need for filters (both the picture and mouth ones).

On the contrary, many people have reported saying their life vastly improved after they’ve stopped using Twitter. Like many social media sites, many have said that it is addictive, with the process of thinking of an idea, tweeting it out, and receiving likes causing a dopamine rush. Another minus side, especially against the community argument, is the growth of harmful communities, like the MAP who describe themselves as part of LGTBQ+ but are attracted to “minor persons.”  The easy mode of communication through not only public tweets but “DMS” or direct messages and group chats allows them to share their ideas and their highly questionable morals. Because of the vast amount of people, completely harmful can be spread like wildfire. NSFW content is also available on the site which is excused due because you first make an account, you have to say that you are 18, but it’s not rare to see people lie about their age on the internet (this doesn’t mean that children are to be expected using the site since its also the parents who must regulate their use of social media). Many people also dislike the fact that there is a limit on the number of characters you can use for each post, but people have bypassed this by writing on a different app and screenshotting their paragraph. There have been complaints of spam and stealing tweets, like the Dory account who got suspended for copying tweets from other comedy accounts which is against their terms of service since tweets are copyrighted

Overall, when considering using social media as large as Twitter, it is always important to consider your mental health and decide for yourself if meeting other people through such an environment is best for you. Twitter can be a place to express yourself and your thoughts but also a place that can be taken advantage of and used for the wrong purpose. Though having a place for such negativity to thrive would be a step backward from world peace, having a place to meet other people alike is closer to the ideal society