As I perused this morning’s news, I became aware that several social media sites, including Facebook were not operating for about three hours early Sunday morning. The outages of FB, Instagram, and Whatsapp were reported just after 6 a.m. eastern time and all three were back online by 9 a.m. So like it or not, millions of people joined me in my time away from social media.
I think it speaks volumes that an outage of a website can be termed “major news” and warrant a story in the media. It’s as if a lifeline has been removed from the world. There’s even a website completely devoted to reporting on such outages as these.
Just one more evidence of the hold that social media has on our world today. One is left to wonder what the repercussions would be if the sites were to be removed permanently…I’m assuming most would survive, but life myself, they would find what a huge part of daily life these outlets have become. And I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
David Lee 