On Monday evening, as I took my dog on her evening walk around the block, I overheard some neighbors who were having a barbecue saying to each other, “How did you survive the Facebook outage today? Because I almost died!” Of course, this was partially for comic effect, but the truth is that a lot of us did feel discombobulated and disconnected when we were force-untethered from a service on which we have come to rely.
I think it’s safe to assume this will happen again, though. So what should we do when it does?
Well, I was certainly reminded just how much of my marketing I do through social media, and that reminded me of why I have so many different platforms. But I was also reminded that it’s kind of nice to have a forced day off. I certainly missed checking in on a few friends, but I didn’t miss all those silly, badly spelled and punctuated meme-quiz things. (WHY am I only able to eat the last thing I ate from now on? What makes the combo of my grandma’s name and the street I grew up on my porn name? And how the heck does posting just the color of my underwear somehow raise cancer awareness?)
So here’s my plan for the next outage, and also maybe a few intentional times: I’m going to take social media detox days! There are studies, of course, that seem to show that limiting our social media time leads to overall better mental health, but abandoning all platforms doesn’t make much sense either. After all, it is a way we keep in touch with loved ones, market out businesses, find and donate to charities, find and apply for jobs, and feel connected with a larger world.
I’m not advocating full-scale abandonment of social media, but wouldn’t a detox every few months be nice? No weirdly unappealing photos of people’s meals (I always wonder if I’m the last person on the planet who eats vegetables), no cringing at a family member’s creepily racist comments, no possibility of feeling you’re falling short of the perfection other people seem to be living. I think I’ll plan a day each quarter. How about you?
