[smt88]

I could not disagree more that Twitter is as necessary as phones ever were in the last 50 years.

I don't ever visit it and am a happy, productive tech worker. I never miss it, and no one I know talks about it in person. I don't personally know any active users.

Its main influence on daily life seems to be when real media re-broadcasts the Twitter speech of famous people.

Facebook could be argued to be essential much more easily and has an order of magnitude more MAUs, but I'd disagree even with that. Lots of normal people I know (including many reading this) have quit FB and not looked back.

Someone who quit landline phones in the 90s would've been considered a nut or a recluse. The only alternative for communicating with them was the postal service, and there was no instantaneous alternative.