Through my African Eyes: Digital Disconnections
10-06-2021
By Stephen Apollo
Current studies have shown that obsessive use of social media has created several physical, psychological, social and political effects, on the both people and the society at large.
While at it, there was a Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outage for about six hours on Monday (10/04/2021). On the one hand, this global tech disruption certainly affected many people adversely, especially those who rely on social media services for business. On the other hand, it gave some a much needed but accidental healthy break from social media. After normalcy returned, I tried to randomly follow some comments on how the outage affected different people all over the world. Here are some comments that caught my attention:
"Yesterday I cooked earlier than usual. It is then that I realized how much time I spend on social media."
"Today I made an award winning discovery, that I can actually keep off my cellphone for more than two hours."
"This breakdown gave me a ticket to sleep so early yesterday. Thank you Facebook for giving me a rare chance of sleeping for seven hours."
"I have just read Zuckerberg’s apology. Does he know how many times I had to restart my phone? Does he know how boring yesterday evening was? Does he know what time I went to bed yesterday? APOLOGY NOT ACCEPTED!"
“Thank you Facebook for the very necessary break.”
“For the first time in my life I was so happy to see my son and daughter unhappy. They looked so unhappy lamenting the social media breakdown. The dinner table was so different yesterday, thank God.”
“I wish this forced media break continues. I really had time for myself and I was able to develop new ideas for my project. Blessings in disguise indeed.”
“Thank you for cancelled dates and now happier marriages.”
“Thank you Facebook for restoring life to me. For the last six hours, I thought the world was coming to an end.”
These comments indicate how hooked many people are to social media, that a technical interruption would disconnect so many people and send them into a disarray. What impact did this interruption have on you? Perhaps it's time we to start to develop healthy social media breaks on very regular basis.
