This is very bold and sweeping but seems directly false. In my experience, tweeting is generally an effective way to relieve momentary anxiety or frustration. Nor do I hold it against other people when they use it that way, even when they're announcing their air-travel delays.

And it all arises out of a simple urge: the urge to exchange the thing that's happening—anxiety, loneliness, frustration over a commute or pregnancy or any of the dozens of difficult mind-states we all encounter dozens of times a day—for a different, better one. It's an attempt to salve some immediate craving, however fleeting. And it never works. It never, ever works and on top of that it's humiliating, the doing, and then the re-doing once you've forgotten the lesson of the unsatisfactoriness of the last go-round. And the only thing worse than watching yourself do it is watching your friends do it. Possibly because there are more of them, possibly because watching one's friends do exactly what you do is somehow more painful.