Can we just be honest? It's time to ghost social media and the billionaires who run it.

I think it’s time. Grab only what you can carry and meet me outside. We’re leaving social media. We tried. We failed. Let’s just move on and laugh about this later.

Why, you ask? Good question. But keep packing while I explain.

It’s not just that Elon Musk bought Twitter and is already showing signs of being a whimsical social media dictator who might have bitten off more than he can chew.

It’s not just that Mark Zuckerberg continues to run a social platform free of any sense of responsibility for handling misinformation or that he’s pushing full steam ahead with the metaverse thing that will likely dig deeper into our lives in intrusive ways even he hasn’t sorted out yet.

It’s that this is all happening as we careen into the midterm elections, giving us a preview of what’s to come during the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Repeating Facebook history: Meta is courting an election 2022 disaster

In other words, all the tomfoolery and toxicity we’ve all been swimming in these past months is the shallow end of a much deeper and murkier political pool. And, let’s be honest, the people assigned to lifeguard duty have no interest in helping us stay afloat.

In fact, they’re watching and profiting as we try to drown each other.

Let’s just agree to walk away

The arrival of Musk at Twitter is being heralded as some kind of protection of free speech. It’s also being fretted over by people who are convinced he’s going to let the social media platform descend into pure chaos as (more) misinformation and Truth Social conspiracy theories take hold and spread.

You know what? It's all going to be true. And I want no part of it. Who in their right mind would want to spend time on a platform where many of the people calling for "free speech" are the ones spreading hate and where the person who is the hero of the free speech movement had a history of problems with offensive tweets before taking over the whole company, then soon after taking over quickly spread misinformation about the attack of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband.

Midterms loom, disinformation thrives: Swift conspiracy spin on Pelosi attack shows how fast lies move

So who was actually surprised when hate speech spiked as soon as Musk took over? Obviously, Twitter wasn't exactly a bastion of love and acceptance before new ownership came in. It played its part in spreading hate, racism and misinformation throughout the country's recent rough patch.

But do you believe that's going to get better or worse with somebody with Musk's history on the platform now having total control? Especially after he fired the person in charge of, well, moderation. That move alone kickstarted the discussion of former President Donald Trump making a hateful return. How many warning signs do you need to see that, as bad as things were on the platform, they're going to get worse?

Will Elon Musk let Trump back on Twitter?: I'm no fan of Trump, but Elon Musk should let the former president come back to Twitter

We’re dividing ourselves, tbh

You’ll see people complaining that social media is dividing us along political lines and ideologies, especially during this election. Just go search “social media is tearing us apart” and look at all the think pieces and references to polls on the topic. This NBC News poll, for example, found that 64% of Americans say social platforms are dividing us.

It’s true we’re very divided and generally have no interest in having grounded discussions about how things are going or any interest in changing our opinion of things as new information gets introduced. Some people will always wrongly believe that Trump won the 2020 election and that the U.S. Capitol rioters did nothing wrong, no matter what proof is offered up.

Common ground: How Americans are fighting back against the forces that manipulate and divide us

If you honestly think Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are bad for our mental health and bad for kids and just an overall horrible experience, then you have to realize that we’re as much to blame for that as the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world.

All they did was build a digital mirror for us to reflect ourselves through, collectively. Social media does amplify and quicken the spread of horrible speech and memes and everything else Musk appears to be opening the door for. But it all starts with us.

Where do we go from here?

The midterm elections are Tuesday. Then we start the work – and trust me, it will be work – of living through the 2024 presidential election.

We’re heading toward a perfect storm of a social media experience in which our elected leaders and their followers are generating waves of lies and hateful speech at a drowning pace at precisely the time the lifeguards step away from their posts.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.

And as bad as things have been to this point, I worry that it's only the beginning of the disrespect and disdain we're willing to throw at each other on social media platforms that are becoming increasingly ingrained in our lives while also being led by people ready to let all that ugliness flow.

It's well past time for us to ghost these platforms. We probably won't. But we should.

Louie Villalobos is deputy opinion editor for USA TODAY. Follow him on Twitter: @louievillalobos

More from Louie Villalobos:

How a nonbinary Pokemon and a GOP governor reminded me it's time to flee Virginia

Thank the father figure in your life. You don't know what he's dealing with.

Facebook has a new name? I'm pretty sure they're going to keep the same practices.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Elon Musk is changing Twitter. Now's the time to leave social media.