Our dependency on social media

For many Filipinos as well as millions of others across the globe, it would have seemed like the world would come to an end a few days ago. We are referring to the outage of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

Millions of social media users suddenly found themselves logged out of their accounts with no way to get back in. The initial fear was that their account had been hacked and was now being used to ask for money from family and friends, to gain access to private information, or what else those who commit identity theft usually do.

Normal service was restored just a matter of hours later. However, the incident showed how much people were dependent on social media for just about everything. During that time businesses couldn’t communicate with their employees, contractors and laborers couldn’t contact clients, and people couldn’t get in touch with friends or family. And social media users couldn’t get the dopamine fix given by their likes.

Meta, the parent company of the platforms mentioned above, later explained that the outage was caused by “errant configuration changes to the routers it uses to coordinate traffic between data centers”.

Now we have to ask: Can any of us who are now so dependent on social media survive without it? We are not talking about loss of signal or electrical power, we are talking about long-term loss of social media due to a terrorist act or even an apocalyptic event.

If you think this is unlikely think again. Remember COVID-19? No one thought that in this day and age the world would be shut down like it was during the great plagues.

But then again, such an event doesn’t have to be apocalyptic or world-changing; a simple change in lifestyle whether by choice or unforeseen circumstances can necessitate going offline or even entirely off the grid. Can we handle that?

Perhaps it’s advisable to prepare ourselves for when we don’t have access to social media one way or another. Or just cut down from time spent online.

There is actually another reason for us to step back from too much online activity. There is now a thing called digital addiction. It’s defined as a harmful dependence on digital media and devices that interferes with daily activities like school, work, and sleep.

While many of us can balance being online and being in the real world, it may soon be a matter of time before we start to spend too much time in the digital realm instead of reality. Some of us might already even be hooked but not know it.