Where were you when Facebook went out? Experiences of involuntary disconnection from social media

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an online questionnaire that collected experiences from the Facebook outage on October 4th, 2021, an event that affected approximately three billion users around the globe. The purpose of the study is to contribute to recent discussions digital disconnection and digital wellbeing by using an extraordinary event of involuntary disconnection as point of departure. Our research questions were: Where were people when the services shut down, what did they think and what did they do? What correlations can be found between usage/attitudes to social media and the experiences of the outage? How can the outage of October 4th be understood as a snapshot of our cultural condition? The questionnaire was distributed to 463 Swedish university students and 191 responses were received. Our analysis shows how the involuntary disconnection caused by the outage was an event that highlights the ambivalence of digital life. It also points to some correlations between general social media use and attitudes, and the experiences and activities during the outage. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications that these findings may have for further research into digital disconnection.