On Tuesday Twitter (or The Twitterer as I call it) went down… and the world ended.
Or so it seemed for many.
It just seemed like a whole lot of people standing around awkwardly going, “Er… what now? Like, what do we do? Like, do I have to talk to people or (gasp!) go outside?”
Especially my mate Dave, who was so devastated that he took to Facebook:
Twitter, I know I said that things have changed but please – I didn’t want you to leave! Please! Come back! We can work this out! It’s not us, it’s THEM. I will mute the trolls, ignore the racists and credit the REAL comedians. I will RT rather than fav, and will engage, engage, engage! I can’t live…if living is without you!
(I don’t think Dave was really that devastated, but he expressed what it seemed so many were actually feeling.)
MEANWHILE…
In the other corner, people were making the most of the social media chaos.
Someone pointed out that the irony of the #TwitterDown hashtag that started doing the rounds once Twitter was back up again, was that it was a meaningless tag while Twitter was down because you couldn’t use it – and then an equally useless tag once it was restored, because it wasn’t true any more.
One of the tweets I saw when my account went live again was someone who had joke-tweeted: “Guys, MySpace is still down, I don’t know what to do.” Which for those in the know is a hilarious dig in the face of the original Facebook before Facebook was a thing that died a lonely and sad death, except in the lives of people trying (repeatedly) to shut down their MySpace accounts. Which may just be impossible.
HOW DO WE SURVIVE WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA?
Social media in an of itself is not a bad thing. As with most things in life it largely depends on how you use it – or in many cases how it uses you.
And an opportunity like a social media platform crashing for a few hours can be a great self-reflective help in determining just how addicted we are to it or not.
Many people I know have done a day or week, and in some cases even a month or longer of jumping off of social media as a kind of technology detox. I have never heard one person who has done that say that they missed it (possibly because the true addicts would never be able to possibly try such a dramatic thing?).
But the point is that we can get used to it and, if not properly managed, we can find an unhealthy tie starting to form.
FINDING A HEALTHY BALANCE
For me it’s about being intentional. If you know why you engage with social media platforms beforehand, you are more likely to use them to good effect.
It can be the same with television – if you just plop yourself down in front of it with no aim in mind, you can often end up wasting hours clicking between channels and not really watching anything.
And it’s not like there is a set purpose – some people use it to connect, while for others it might be to gather people around a cause like #BlackLivesMatter or to discover helpful articles or follow current trends.
So take a few minutes to think about your relationship with the various social media platforms and ask if any of them feel unhealthy in the way you relate to them at the moment.
TAKE ACTION BEFORE IT GETS OUT OF HAND
If Twitter going down for a couple of hours caused you anxiety, I encourage you to use the moment to do a bit of a stock take.
If you can’t go for a whole day without the need to check your phone constantly, you may want to take a moment to pause.
If you are spending so much time Instagramming your experiences that you aren’t actually really experiencing them, you could maybe use a change.
The idea is to remind the social media who is boss. Maybe put some boundaries in place as to when you can and can’t be on it. Invite a close friend or family member to hold you accountable. Experiment with a bit of a fast. Make some intentional log off/unplug times during the day to just be, or to go outside, or to (gasp!) talk to someone.
We were created to live life to the full. Refuse to settle for anything less than that – especially when it comes to something as simple as social media.