During the week of October fourth, Facebook and Instagram users encountered an outage lasting several hours on two separate occasions.
Throughout the world, billions of people use Facebook to connect with others. During the outage, we were forced to disconnect from the most popular social media platform in the world.
While the outages were frustrating, they also unknowingly forced us to focus on the present and disconnect from a synthetic lifestyle, at least for a little while.
As the infamous whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed, Facebook intentionally displays content in our feed that circulates messages of hate and misinformation.
During the outage, without easy access to a source of content that produces strong emotional responses of anger, we’re forced to focus our attention on the world around us. We had to find other activities to fill our time with, other than what was once filled with viewing hateful content.
Also, groups who support and post content filled with hateful ideologies and misinformation were forced to disconnect from that type of lifestyle.
Those group members were left in isolation, forced to reconnect with the genuine environment in which they live.
Those of us who do not support extremist groups but still view Facebook content were forced to focus on the world around us.
All around us, we can see beautiful events taking place: a dog and their owner taking a walk, a baby in a stroller at the grocery store, a beautiful sunset, fireflies lighting up the night sky.
When we focus our attention on social media and the negative content it provides, it’s easy to forget about all of the beauty that surrounds us.
When we take a step back and spend less time on social media, our stress levels decrease and we are able to take notice of the beautiful things that surround us.
Was the Facebook outage frustrating for millions of people? Yes.
Without meaning to, was the outage beneficial for most people’s mental health though? Yes.