On October 4 Facebook and Instagram (with associated apps) had a global outage that sent people over the edge with concern, worry, and general hair-pulling. With a Facebook and Instagram outage, followers took to Twitter to slam the giants and poke fun at the general craziness of the memes created.
But while others were having a meltdown, I saw the outage as a blessing in disguise and was hoping for more than a couple of hours. A week would have been better. It would have forced all of us to do the following to stay in touch with ourselves and others:
- Pick up the phone and dial a number to talk to another person.
- Use email or text to communicate.
- Look at your meal instead of a photo of your meal you just posted to determine what you’re eating.
- Read an actual book instead of getting the publisher’s notes off Amazon and acting like we have the entire plot memorized.
- Go outside and spend some quality time in the fresh air, taking deep, slow breaths to calm down.
- Find your paper and pens just in case it gets bad, and you need to write anything.
- Pick up those hobbies you just had to have during COVID-19 lockdowns and give them a try – you can do this.
I understand that small businesses were hit especially hard when their ability to contact with their customers was cut off and I don’t take the seriousness of that lightly. But a friend reminded me there were many ways to communicate and we need to be open to other pathways, not just Facebook and Instagram.
Maybe we should all try a social media free day each week to wean ourselves off the dependence. Every week I get a report on my phone usage, and I’m always amazed when the report tells me I spent five-six hours a day wandering aimlessly on my phone, doing who knows what. We need to get that time back and losing social media on Monday was truly a blessing in disguise.
