On Monday, October 4th, there was a social media outage where Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were down for longer than six hours. In fact, according to CNBC, this was the longest interruption Facebook has faced since 2008. As we all went through it, I’m sure we had similar reactions. At first, you might have been wondering whether your phone was to blame, then after finding out most people were going through it, wondering whether the entire world was experiencing it, only to be bewildered at how this happened and when it would end.
Now, I like to think of myself as someone who is not too reliant on social media. I prefer to spend my time outdoors face-to-face interacting with people rather than on my phone. I guess it also helps that I’m not very tech-savvy. I haven’t used Snapchat in years, I’ve never even had TikTok on my phone, and barely ever opened my Twitter app. Every so often, I delete my Instagram to remind myself not to get too wrapped up in the world of social media, and I pretty much only use Facebook for university-related things. So, when this outrage initially happened, I didn’t have much of a reaction to it. I figured it would end soon, and “heck, we could all use a break from social media.”
But then I remembered the last time I tried to reassure myself about something ending soon, and two years later, here we still are, wearing masks and not yet quite back to normal life. And then I started to imagine different scenarios. “What if this is only the beginning?” and “what if all social media gets shut down?” Because even though I’d like to think I’m not addicted to social media like most people my age are, I could be wrong.
I realized that while I might not spend most of my time scrolling through apps like Instagram and TikTok daily, I am pretty reliant on apps like Telegram and WhatsApp. This might sound familiar to those who live far, far away from their families and close friends. When you migrate and are used to having people you love live in different places around the world, it can feel quite isolating. So the mere idea of not having access to any social media, even for a brief time, to let my mom know that I was okay, horrified me.
At that point, I realized how appreciative I am that I live in a time in which I have such quick and easy access to the people I love the most who live the furthest away from me. I have the luxury of feeling just a little less lonely with a single tap on a screen.