9 reasons why students shouldn’t join Twitter

This March will mark Twitter’s seventh birthday, and the service now has in excess of 500 million users, sending over 340 million tweets per day. But what do your fellow students actually say on there which is of any importance to anyone?! People with too much time on their hands natter on about what’s “trending” and about their #lols #jokes #hashtags but should you care? The dreaded January exam season is about to grip us, so in order to limit procrastination this is more important than usual; here are nine reasons why NOT to join Twitter:

You’re only doing it because you feel you should

All of your friends are guffawing over that hysterical hipster parody account, and you just feel a bit left out. What if Twitter is actually something you really enjoy once you begin?! But lets face it, Twitter has been around for almost seven years so if you really wanted to join you would have done it before now. I don’t think you and Twitter are going to get on.

It’s just another way to avoid revision

You think Twitter is futile and find it hilarious to refer to people who use Twitter as “twits.” But by the time you have chosen your background and gone through all 137 of your Facebook profile pictures to find an appropriate photo, you realise that an hour of your day has already disappeared. An hour where you should have been cramming for this afternoon's exam. Turn back now before it is too late.

You don’t have time

That hour which you have just wasted making your profile and thinking of a witty ‘bio’ (whilst only managing to muster something along the lines of “I’m 20 and study Geography at Southampton Uni”) can never be returned to you. And this is just the beginning. You have plenty of other beneficial things to be doing; just look at that stack of reading and ennui-inducing lecture notes which you need to squeeze into your exhausted mind! You persuade yourself that Twitter will be worthwhile. You are wrong.

You feel weird about the concept of ‘following’ people

If you ‘follow’ people around in real life, it is illegal, but you’re somehow expected to find it acceptable to ‘follow’ people on here?! Firstly you ‘follow’ your close friends but you’re unsure whether it is weird to ‘follow’ people that you’ve only met a few times. It is all a bit strange but before you know it you are following your lecturers, a parody account of Big Ben, and Humphrey, a divorced plumber who lives in Scarborough.

You have nothing to say

After editing your profile and following a few people, you’ll sit there for 10 minutes deliberating over what your first tweet should be, before posting something truly exhilarating to your 0 followers like “omg so drunk last night, now going to my lecture #hungover.” Deep down you know that in 140 characters, whatever you say is either not worth saying, or is worth more space than Twitter allows.

The amount of useless information is overwhelming

Soon enough you are following swarms of mindless individuals who tweet about their increasingly intriguing days (“Lush 10 and a half hours sleep! Now for a day in the library!”). Your timeline is riddled with morons lamenting over their burnt dinner, and Humphrey the plumber trying to sell you an excellent deal on a second hand kitchen U-bend.

You will get addicted

It might take a few hours, days or weeks, but it will happen. You will spend every spare second scrolling through an unending list of drivel, forcing yourself to read every single tweet, because what if you have missed a really important one? Time spent in lectures, on the bus, and waiting for friends becomes time when doing anything but checking Twitter is inconceivable. It is the last thing you do before you go to sleep, and as soon as the morning comes you check it to find out all of the important information that you missed whilst you were asleep; the news that Joey Essex really likes Marmite.

Hashtags are annoying

Procrastinating Twitter rookies are the biggest culprits of mind-blowingly aggravating hashtags. Some of those which I have seen implicated include: #lovegeography #mushroomcurry #somuchh #hotbath #IMSOOOOOOOOCOLD #arrrrhhhhh #9amlecture #xxxxx. No one needs these in their life.

No one wants you there anyway

If your friends were to tell you the truth, they would admit that they let out a thundering groan when they received that e-mail informing them that you were their new follower. They feel obliged to follow you back in order to avoid an argument but you are boring enough in real life. No-one wants to see you moaning about how you really need a hair cut or about the catastrophe when you discovered that there was only one fish finger left in the freezer. Even your lecturers comment on how banal your tweets are. Just leave, now. Leave and never return.

Howell is a Geography student at the University of Southampton and Student Brand Ambassador for i. Follow him on Twitter here.