Recently, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp stopped working and for many their world suddenly stopped, as they are all owned and operated by Facebook. To be fair it was a shock.
We think of the availability of these apps as a certainty, as if they will always be there, like the air or the sky, but they are just mobile and computer applications and technology does not always work.
There is an argument that we crave other people ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ one of our posts or someone ‘follows’ us, as if our self worth is tied to it. I think it has more to do with the hit of dopamine we get when we get acknowledgement via a like, share or follow, and how addictive this is.
Many of us use these apps to communicate with others, but often we use social media apps as entertainment or to just sustain our attention, so we can switch off and not have to think.
The problem is that when we get absorbed into the infinite scroll we check out of reality for a while. All sorts could be going on around us but we would have no idea. This is the power of social media.
Communicating with each other is supposed to he done face to face with eye contact and hand shakes and pats on the back. When we spend a lot of time with our eyes down and our attention on a mobile phone we avoid the opportunities to develop the skill of socialising. The ability to make friends and influence people is a skill that is becoming more scarce due to the lack of practice.
I saw the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage as a blessing to unplug and socialise the old fashioned way. It also highlighted our dependency on technology and social media in particular. We need to rebalance ourselves and reduce screen time and increase actual facetime.
The Fullfilment Project 