Social networking sites like Twitter provide a fun and easy way to keep in touch with friends, stay updated on current events, and shamelessly stalk celebrities. But when twitter-surfing takes priority over school work or physically being with friends and family, you might want to think of better ways to delegate your time.

I quit using my Twitter account a while ago, and I have to admit that for about the first week or so I had a pretty hard time with it. I missed the bizarre trending topics, amusing hashtags, and even the occasional indirect tweet war, although I couldn’t really figure out why. It didn’t really add any practical value to my life, and more often than not it just made it easier for me to procrastinate. However, these feelings are more common than I thought- so common that they’ve even been given a name: FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. A recent study found that turning off your phone can create feelings of restlessness similar to symptoms of drug addicts going through withdrawal. If this isn’t alarming, I don’t know what is. We are so connected to our online life that separating ourselves from it causes physical distress.

It is important to note, however, that FOMO is based on a premise of lies. People’s tweets are in no way an accurate representation of their everyday activities. If they were, you would probably be seeing a lot more information about picking up dog poop and losing car keys than you would ever want to know. In fact, some spend hours thinking of a tweet that will garner the maximum amount of retweets and favorites, which is pretty pathetic as there are so many other ways to spend your time. For example, rediscover your love for watercolor painting, add to your repertoire of martial arts moves, bake something without using a recipe- whatever floats your boat, but don’t feel an obligation to update the world about it. After all, maybe in the absence of scrolling through tweets about other people’s allegedly awesome lives, you will improve your own.