The United States spent 121 billion minutes on social media sites in July 2012, according to Nielsen’s Annual Social Media report. With my impending social media doom trembling between my tweeting thumbs, I’m grabbing a hold of my 140 character reins and becoming a student of social media. Thus, I have compiled this report of all the things I’ve learned from Twitter (subject to whom you follow).

The most reliable source of weather is Twitter. Why wake up and get out of bed in the morning to check the current outdoor conditions when you can just stay in bed and look on your phone. Luckily I have so many followers who love to tweet the weather at their current location every morning, especially in barley-extreme weather events. They are usually better than any weather app on my phone. In fact you can learn all sorts of things about climate on Twitter. These are a few of my favorites: It rains in Maine. It’s windy in Maine. Maine is cold. Annoyingly cold. It snows in Maine. If it weren’t for social media I’d have no concepts of my surroundings.

Twitter has opened me up to a whole world of social and psychological issues I had no clue people were struggling with. I realize how hard it is for my followers to get up in the morning. They face so many struggles like the awful syndrome, Procrastination, which I’ve learned a lot about through Twitter, both personally and through others. The battles facing people in their tweets seem to be specific to one person. No one in the world, it appears, could ever have the same problem as another. Going to class is a painful ordeal for people; they must have to walk so far in terrible conditions. I think many tweet-people have insomnia as well. But of all the issues facing the tweeter today homework seems to be the most heart-wrenching task on the face of the twittersphere. I don’t know how people still find time to post updates with such a burden.

Twitter can be really great; it alerts you to when Breaking Bad, the Red Sox, the Voice, President Obama, the Bruins, the Patriots and Mad Men are on TV. Yet it can alert you to very important things as well such as when your friends are really feeling down in the dumps about an ex–I mean feeling great about their significant other, no I lied, they feel crappy. It’s so hard to tell when people post ambiguous tweets about “no one in particular.”

My knowledge gained from twitter has even expanded to small niche groups of information that the average person without an account wouldn’t know. I have an extensive arsenal of pick up lines about the government shut down just waiting to be used. My favorite is, “Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, I’m on furlough, so call me maybe?” I also know Bible quotes and country song lyrics. I know a list of many things longer than Kim Kardashinan’s marriage, but I supposed that information is out of date since she’s now having a child with Kanye West.

The most important thing Twitter has taught me is, I should get off it.