After some social media platforms went MIA (missing in action), social media butterflies were undoubtedly left in the dark. Maybe, the dark wasn’t actually such a bad place after all, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Ashleigh Nefdt. After all, the dark certainly fortunes the wheels of our minds to turn.
Any period of solitude allows for reflection. The temporary end of the giants of the social media world, was no exception, and if anything spurred the beginning of some necessary societal gaze.
I think that the void that Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent, Oculus) left, was the perfect place to take a glance inward.
Here is what, in my opinion, the social media blackout, brought to light about ourselves.
Many of us are unprofessed addicts
For some people, the blackout may have felt eerily similar to the days when booze and cigarettes were banned during hard lockdown. Suddenly, people were inspecting their WiFi routers in the same way they scoured through drawers and car cubby-holes looking for just one cigarette. For others, the shortage of socials led to standing at the strangest points in one’s house desperately seeking signal as if looking for a non-existent bottle of wine in the back of the cellar. There was a feeling of withdrawal for many. Frustration. If some didn’t realise how deep the addictive river ran, the blackout certainly highlighted this in bold.
According to experts, social media addiction runs parallel to many other substance use disorders. Some indicators are mood modification (engaging in social media can make you feel calm whereas not engaging causes stress) or salience (a preoccupation that’s behavioral, cognitive and emotionally linked to some platforms).
But for others, there was a psychological peace
Professor Kelly Goldsmith made an analogy once that giants like Instagram and Facebook were akin to the horsemen of the scarcity apocalypse. Essentially what she was talking about was the impact of comparison. Wasn’t it fantastic to just have a break from comparing our lives to everyone else, even for a brief period?
Suddenly, the pressure to do something social because everyone else is, was gone. Suddenly, the usual trigger that might make us want to buy a new outfit or hit the gym, was void. Suddenly, it didn’t matter what we had to contribute to digital society, but rather what we wished to contribute to ourselves.
A lot of my friends mentioned that they actually slept way better the night of the blackout. Hints from a 2018 British study once highlighted that social media use actually decreases and disrupts sleep, so this was not an entirely surprising take.
Taking a breather from the mass influx of images was also like sweet country air. If the brain processes images 60 000 times faster than text, then a bit of a slow down from the race was admittedly glorious.
People realised how intruding work actually is on our ‘off’ hours
Since the world went exponentially digital thanks to the pandemic, there’s been an arguable presence of unofficial working hours. You know the feeling – you’re home after the 9-5 grind, but a WhatsApp from your boss or a client could pop-up at any moment. Taking WhatsApp out of the equation on that fateful Monday, this splurge of anxiety was largely minimalised once we realised the world was off. Of course there were still phone calls and texts that could emerge, but a large space of the WhatsApp work route, was cleared. If anything, WhatsApp’s missing person case brought to light to just how invaded our personal capacities have become.
The mass influx of news let us escape
As much as our working world can sneak up on us at any given moment, so does the news. Since many media companies rely heavily on Facebook and Instagram to redirect traffic to their websites, a casual scroll on your feed can easily take your mind from a gorgeous sunset to a heartbreaking headline. We can’t control the algorithm, and less what we can see. Having the break from the ever-watchful presence of online media culture too, highlighted just how little we actually control what enters our brains.
As it is with many things, social media is a double-edged sword. Powerful and hurtful. However, for this writer, the blackout made me wonder. If the negatives almost equate the positives, what would it be like if there was just a few hours of the day when social media just wasn’t there?
Also read:
Letters from the land of socials: the strangest parts of social media to wrap our heads around
Picture: Instagram/ @player11en