I guess Facebook and some other social media sites have been shut down today? I am kinda freaking out a bit… cause Facebook is where I do a lot of my business. I do a lot of social media posting on my Facebook business pages and I share my blog posts and You Tube videos on my Facebook platform.

What would I do if social media went away forever? I mean I grew up without social media. I never for once imagined, when I was younger, that there would ever be a “thing” such as Instagram, You Tube or Facebook. I was even skeptical about My Space when it first came out.

The news said that today, shortly before noon, a widespread social media outage has happened. The news also said that it’s “not uncommon for social media outages to occur, but to have so many go out, Facebook, Instagram, What’s App, Facebook Messenger to go out at the same time is rare.”

What is going on people? What would we do if there was a prolonged outage of social media? How would we function? We are so used to turning on our social media in this fast, techbased world we live in, to get in touch with people. If one day, we could no longer do that…

1. We would have to talk to people in person more often. We would have to learn to network face – to – face. We could go back to making appointments in person. We would probably have more lunch or dinner dates. Dating would become something more than superficial again.
2. I would not, could not hide behind a facade or a “mask” (ha ha) anymore. I would have to be myself and let people see the true me. On social media, I can present a totally different version of who I am.
3. I wouldn’t rely on social media marketing tools to see how well my business is doing. Oh look, I had 40 likes on my blog post today. Or, look, I gained ten new followers in one day. We would have to be honest with ourselves and actually look at our profits and our customers. We would have to notice what is selling.
4. I could read more. Social media wouldn’t be the first thing I look at in the morning and the last thing I check at night. I could pick up a book and actually read it without worrying who is offended by my last conservative post. I would have to start reading newspapers again and magazines. Maybe, I could even start my own magazine? My mom wrote a church newsletter for many years. Collected the articles, did the graphic layout on her computer and printed them off on her IBM printer. She did that without any social media.
5. I also think it would improve mental and physical health. Maybe, I could focus on actually eating better and more healthy if I wasn’t checking social media for recipes and ideas on how to eat vegetarian. I would probably go walk my dogs a lot more.
6. I would definitely get more card making and scrapbooking done, if I wasn’t constantly on the prowl for new ideas, on social media. I could actually send cards out to more people and bring back snail mail. I still like to get letters and cards in the mail… and it happens so rarely. Maybe the price of postage would go back down, if we started using it more often.

Not that I don’t like social media. I do! I really, really do! I am going to miss publishing this blog and not being able to share it on Facebook. I would hate making a video on You Tube if nobody was going to watch it. But…. could I live without social media…. if I really had to? I think I could. It would be an adjustment, but I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

What would you do if there were no more social media?

Thinking Positively

Positively, Debbie