Everyone and their mom is talking about Twitter. In case you don’t know, Twitter is a way for people to send little snippets about their daily life to an audience. Politicians, celebrities and other public figures tweet incessantly about their lives and work. Who else does? Just about everyone.

For every luminary or comedian tweeting their insights and wisdom, there is a hairy nerd tweeting his World of Warcraft level, or a giddy dog-lover tweeting her Pomeranian’s grooming schedule. I hypothesized pet-tweeting to my friend as a joke yesterday, only to be crestfallen when he told me many people tweet for their pets. Have we really gotten to this point as a society?

This makes me want to say that Twitter is an inane waste of time and a blotch on our collective intelligence. How much time has already been wasted on Twitter? As if Facebook status updates weren’t enough, now we’re gathering periodic input from dozens of people who may or may not be worth listening to.

I don’t consider myself a good manager of my own time, and Twitter certainly isn’t helping. I signed up just to write this article, and I’ve already wasted about five minutes of my life that I can’t ever get back. John Mayer had Swedish pancakes and wasted 12 of his own seconds writing about it. Jimmy Fallon said he had a great show in Boston, too. I don’t care, and it’s my fault for reading about it.

Twitter opens us up to a new level of social voyeurism. Humans have always had an instant awareness of what’s around them through sensory information. When our focus gets pulled in 20 different directions and we are following the lives of others, it takes meaning away from the present moment. The people you are with should never get trumped by your Twitter stream, and shame on you if you’d rather follow Shaq’s tweets than speak with someone you know. You’re not in a relationship with Shaq, and although he could conceivably follow your Twitter, he’s not actually going to.

I don’t rail against Twitter because it’s not valuable — there are certainly great things to learn if it is used in moderation. Musicians, chefs, artists and politicians can find out useful tips or get a handle on what’s happening in their respective professions. My boss at the restaurant I work at can post daily happenings and food specials, which can pique the interest of food bloggers and critics.

Twitter is best used when it’s meaningful. What’s the worst that could happen? Everyone feeling like their tweets are important for other people to read. Knowing that somebody you know, or even a celebrity, is brushing their teeth is absolutely useless. Finding out about earmark spending in Congress from John McCain’s Twitter is very intriguing. How else would I have found out that 1.7 million taxpayer dollars were being requested for pig-odor research in Iowa? Pork-barrel spending, literally.

The burden is on the individual user to decide what’s valuable and on the people doing the tweeting to not tweet asinine information. It’s interesting to follow, but can quickly become a drain on our collective intelligence. The last thing we need is another reason to waste time. Someday, we may see on Ken Griffey Jr.’s Twitter feed that a high-fly ball is incoming and realize that while tweeting, he forgot to put his glove out. Or reading Clay Bennett’s as he tweets a play-by-play of the Oklahoma City Thunder winning the NBA Championship. That, my friends, is the worst that could happen.

Reach columnist Jackson Rohrbaugh at opinion@dailyuw.com.