The 46-year-old social media virgin: how people ditch Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and survive

Around 29.5% of Australian internet users use Twitter at least once a month, compared to 76.8% who use Facebook. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

Matt* should’ve joined Twitter years ago. He fits the user profile perfectly: highly educated, a politics junkie, across the news, loves a debate, and he’s a climate scientist.

But unlike many users publicly grappling with Elon Musk’s new universe, threatening to jump ship (but then lingering on the deck), or trying to muster the energy to migrate to another platform and, ahem, “toot”, Matt is a social media virgin. Unblemished, unsullied – the 46-year-old has never joined a single social media platform.