Giving up Twitter for Lent: How and Why We Take Breaks from Social Media

Social media use is widespread, but many people worry about overuse. This paper explores how and why people take breaks from social media. Using a mixed methods approach, we pair data from users who tweeted about giving up Twitter for Lent with an interview study of social media users. We find that 64% of users who proclaim that they are giving up Twitter for Lent successfully do so. Among those who fail, 31% acknowledge their failure; the other 69% simply return. We observe hedging patterns (e.g. "I thought about giving up Twitter for Lent but...") that surfaced uncertainty about social media behavior. Interview participants were concerned about the tradeoffs of spending time on social media versus doing other things and of spending time on social media rather than in "real life." We discuss gaps in related theory that might help reduce users' anxieties and open design problems related to designing systems and services that can help users manage their own social media use.