Did you survive the social media apocalypse?

Where were you during the great social media blackout of October 2021? I was getting ready for a Reaction subscriber dinner thinking our work group chat had fallen strangely quiet. As I got on the bus I opened Instagram and tried unsuccessfully to refresh my homepage. Something was up. I turned to trusty Twitter to confirm my suspicions: Facebook had gone offline.

At around 4pm on Monday 4 October, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram stopped working, impacting more than 3.5 billion users worldwide. Facebook later explained that the social media platforms had been brought offline by a “faulty configuration change which not only impacted the websites and apps, but also affected the company’s internal tools,” but the internet wasn’t so sure. Unverified information spread like wildfire across Twitter; Facebook had “gone” never to return.

The brief respite from Facebook’s dominance of our online lives split people into two categories; the archaic (blissfully unaware anything was happening) and the addicted (panicked at the prospect of being offline). But across the board, the “digital apocalypse” left people wondering what life would look like if the rumours were true and Facebook didn’t come back?

Despite our obvious reliance on Facebook, the end of Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrous creation would not immediately mean an end to our social media obsession. During its six-hour absence, people flocked to Twitter and TikTok: “Like this if you’re only here because Instagram is down,” reads the comment section of most TikTok videos posted in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Pornhub reported a 19 per cent spike in web traffic as soon as Facebook went down. If the app cycle over the last decade is anything to go by, it would only be a matter of time before a new tech giant was created to fill the Facebook gap (remember Myspace or Vine?).

A world without Facebook would, however, put a lot of people out of a job. Those working in digital marketing often use Facebook to run their client ads and many businesses rely on Instagram for customer service and marketing purposes. Overnight, influencers would have essentially lost their place of work and entire following. It wouldn’t be particularly great news for Zuckerberg either, who reportedly lost £4.4 billion from his paper fortune at one point last night as Facebook shares plummeted. 

In parts of the developing world, Facebook’s outage meant more than an inconvenience. In areas of rural South America where phone service has not yet been implemented but the internet is available, messaging services are a lifeline and means of connectivity with the outside world. In Africa and India, using Facebook messenger or WhatsApp is often cheaper, and therefore more accessible, than a phone call. All around the world Facebook and its services are used for e-commerce and business. 

It is hard to talk about social media and its presence or absence without talking about mental health. Many of those who called for Facebook to never come back said they felt they would be happier without it, especially Instagram. This scrutiny comes at a bad time for Facebook as whistle-blower and ex-employee, Frances Haugen, is currently giving evidence against the tech giant, suggesting Facebook refuses to put safeguarding measures in place as they “put their astronomical profits before people”. The evidence particularly focuses on Facebook’s knowledge that Instagram has detrimental effects on the self-esteem of teenage girls, but has done nothing to counteract this.

I don’t know what I would do without Instagram or Whatsapp; I am in the addict category. But the outage illuminated the monopolisation of the tech industry by Facebook and the terrifying power we have allowed one company to have over our communication habits and digital lives. It came as a welcome reminder to look into my own social media habits too; you don’t need an outage to log off now and again.

Now that it is back online, a meme is being shared across Instagram: “I survived the Facebook/Instagram blackout of 2021”. On Twitter, an ancient proverb has been adapted for the occasion: “If something happens and no one posts on Instagram, did it even happen at all?” Is it possible to imagine a world without Facebook, or are we too far gone?