Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has taken a hiatus from Twitter in 2018, a break which started over Christmas weekend.
“We don’t have smartphones in our house much on Sundays,” Sasse told Business Insider in an interview published Tuesday. “Christmas weekend I decided to take a longer-than-just-Sunday social media Sabbath. And after it had gone on four days it felt pretty great.”
Sasse said his Twitter notifications have been disabled from his phone and he does not compose tweets on his personal account anymore. He does sometimes receive tweets in the form of a text or email from others and can see tweets if they have been embedded in a news story.
Sasse added that the break from Twitter was a healthy choice, since “there’s just a ton of data about the way social media is designed to create dopamine hits for teenage kids.”
As a father, Sasse said he and his wife were evaluating his children’s use of social media and as a result, believed some changes should be implemented.
Sasse said his departure from Twitter is not permanent, but he is uncertain when he would return to the platform.
“I think when I return to social media, I’m gonna create a bunch of rules for myself that flow from stuff my wife and I have been thinking about for our kids,” Sasse said. “So I’ll be back, but I just haven’t decided a timeline.”
Sasse had made a reputation for himself by composing his own tweets in which he would weigh in on policy discussions or criticize President Trump.
