What happens psychologically when we’re cut off from social media?
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In what is being called the ‘great social media blackout of 2021’, for more than five hours on October 4, the impossible happened: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down.
For so many of us heavily reliant on social media and messaging sites to entertain ourselves and communicate with friends and family, it was something close to a nightmare.
Facebook blamed a ‘faulty configuration change’ for the outage which caused a ‘cascading effect’ bringing platforms to a halt, and while it’s now fixed, it was a sharp reminder of how dependent we are on social media.
Many of us rushed to other platforms such as Twitter to get our fix, and even resorted to (gasp) actually texting or calling our friends.
‘What’s really interesting with the outage is the immediate digital detox that we were all forced to engage with that wasn’t voluntary,’ says Dr Rachael Kent, lecturer in digital economy and society at King’s College London and founder of Dr Digital Health.
‘We’re all now grappling day-t...
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