How do people react when social media shuts down?

Photo Courtesy: SYN Media

Wednesday morning, I woke up from a great slumber. The sun was shining through the blinds in my friend’s bedroom and you could hear the birds chirping. I reached for my phone to see what the weather was like today — it was 75 and sunny in Marina del Rey. Boy, was I happy to be in California for spring break.

As any person would do before they get up, I went to check Instagram, Facebook, and other social media. I noticed Instagram wasn’t refreshing or showing captions to images, and it wouldn’t let me posts pictures. Nothing to worry, I thought. I should just update the app or check my internet connection. Again, nothing.

I went on Twitter since nothing else was working and saw #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown were trending. Shit was serious. I thought I was in a terrible nightmare, but the reality was everyone was suffering from the “Instagram Blackout of 2019” (or as I like to say this year’s Fyre Festival).

So, what happened? Why were all social media platforms down? Was Instagram and Facebook hacked by Russia like Lindsay Lohan suggested?

After a 14-hour outage, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were back up and running Wednesday evening. According to Women’s Wear Daily writer, Layla Llchi, “The March 13, 2019 outage marks the largest lapse in the 15-year history of Facebook and in the roughly nine years since Instagram was founded.”

Down Detector, a website that tracks accessibility issues for sites across the web, reported the first signs of the problem appeared at noon Eastern Standard Time.

“34 percent of users had trouble with logging into Facebook, 33 percent had issues with newsfeed, and 31 percent experienced a total blackout of service,” according to Down Detector.

Digital Trend writer, Trevor Mogg, says Instagram users started to report the same behavior, as did users in WhatsApp, who were unable to send and receive messages.

Down Detector reported, “43 percent of users couldn’t access their newsfeed, 34 percent couldn’t log into Instagram, and 21 percent couldn’t access Instagram through a browser.”

The outage caused panic and frustration among users who could not access platforms.

Central Michigan University junior, Sarah Dennis, says, “After I updated, refreshed, and even turned my phone off and on, I was like what the heck is wrong with Instagram. The shutdown drew me into a panic, and I felt antsy the whole day. I literally check Instagram 100 times a day because how else am I supposed to know what Jessie James Decker is doing?”

Users took to Twitter as #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown trended with a pinch of humor.

Actor and comedian, Josh Peck, tweeted, “With Facebook and Instagram down, every Fit Tea has filed for bankruptcy” and “Every second Facebook and Instagram are down, a latte doesn't get its picture taken.”

Social Media Editor for 10 Daily, Lawrence Champness joked about “firing up” his MSN Messenger again.

Other celebrities like Lindsay Lohan tweeted about the outage. Lindsay said she’d been “hacked” and demanded “@instagram please contact me.”

Loyola Marymount University junior, Francesca Xuereb says, “Even though Instagram was down, I got a kick out of all the pictures, videos, and memes people were posting on Twitter. People were saying some hilarious things like why would Lindsay Lohan think Instagram would call her?”

Francesca says even though Twitter kept her entertained for the time being she really missed scrolling through Instagram.

Facebook took to Twitter to let users know that they were aware of the situation affecting its family of apps and promised to sort the issue out “as soon as possible.” Facebook also clarified that “the outage had not been caused by a Distributed Denial of Service attack” (sorry, Lindsay but Russians aren’t to blame here).

Facebook tweeted an apology to users Thursday and said the outage was a result of a server issue.

“Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services,” the tweet read. “We’ve now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience.”

Instagram also went to Twitter to announce services were back up and running, stating, “Anddddd… we’re back” with a GIF of Oprah Winfrey.