Social network blackouts are most unwelcome at a time when Twitter and Facebook have basically become as important as breathing in our day to day lives.
Social network blackouts seem to be a real thing nowadays. When Twitter experienced a major outage recently, people turned to Facebook to complain. Technology is very unstable. Imagine a situation where Twitter is blacked out and Facebook servers crash due to the avalanche of complaints about Twitter and Tumblr, shuts itself down for a while to prevent traffic from crashing its servers. Imagine a cave-man like existence where there is complete connectivity but nothing to connect to. Doomsday indeed. So, what do you do when your digital life is shut down for a while?
1. Hangout with your family
Your family and friends have awesome lives in the digital world; why not drop down in person and say a hi. I’m sure you will love them in the 3-Dimensional world as much as you do in the 2-Dimensional world. Instead of using emojis to show love, why not give them a hug? Instead of straining your neck by constantly looking down on your phone, why not use your voice and have a conversation with them? Or better yet.. Have an actual dinner with them? Sounds exciting doesn’t it? And yes, that was sarcasm.
2. Look at nature
Whoa! What beauty nature holds! Let me click a picture and upload it to… Oh crap! Yes, keep your phone aside and soak in the beauty of nature. Experience the feeling all by yourself and revel in the peace it offers. You don’t have to share every moment of your life with the world. Keep this to yourself. Remove the blinders that you have and take a 360 degree, 3-Dimensional view of your surroundings. You don’t have to go to a fancy place to enjoy nature. Just step outside your home, free from the clutches of your phone, and I guarantee that you won’t regret it.
3. Are you a loner? Watch that movie you always wanted to watch or god forbid, read a book!
I’ve always wanted to see so many movies (my bucket list is huge!) but never do so because I’m always connected with everyone to find the time to actually finish one movie or book. Being a book-lover, I chide myself for spending too much time on my phone and very less time with my true love, books. The lure of technology is too much for me to resist and I always end up choosing it over books. A social media outage provides the perfect excuse for me to curl up in a corner and read a book or watch that one movie which I always wanted to watch. Better yet, curl up with a loved one and do it!
4. Disconnect before you reconnect.
When was the last time you had some alone time for yourself? You may live alone but aren’t you always in touch with someone through your phone? Disconnect everything and have some quality alone time. Blast the stereo and dance around in your apartment. Or, pamper yourself with a long, warm bath and get some beauty sleep. Are you the outdoorsy type? Get out of your apartment and go for a long walk. Observe people around you and soak in the endorphins from the walk. Do anything but do it alone. And do it by being disconnected.
You could also..
Oh crap! Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr working again? Great! Let’s all go back to our shells and continue our zombie-like existence within our smartphones and ‘stay in touch.’ You know, the way I see it, a social media blackout may not be a bad thing after all. In fact, I’d say, if those huge corporations cared about us even a little bit, they might ‘create’ a social media blackout for a few hours, just so we can reconnect with people around us. But that’s just wishful thinking isn’t it (she writes as she goes back to checking Facebook and tweeting about this post; yes I’m one of you too!).
