Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook experienced a global outage Monday morning. 

The three social media platforms were out of service for about six hours. This was as a result of a self-inflicted problem, not a hack, according to Facebook. 

Users of these platforms were unable to refresh the page or their feeds during this time, leading to frustration across the web.

“I would imagine it caused a lot of boredom and frustration for those that use these platforms as their main form of communication and entertainment,” said Andrew Smith, an Associate Professor in Communications who teaches classes in digital content strategy.

For a lot of teenagers and young adults, social media is a big part of their everyday life. 

According to an article written by Alan Jones in The Scotsman, most people, and especially the young ones, could not last a day without their smartphones or social media.

“Three out of four teenagers said they could not last a day without using social media, with one in seven admitting they would not last an hour,” Jones said.

For those who use WhatsApp on a daily basis, this global outage was unexpected and inconvenient.

“WhatsApp being down made it difficult for some international students and users to contact their families,” Smith said.

While this was going on, Twitter was making fun of the three social media platforms, taking advantage of the situation. 

The official Twitter account posted “hello literally everyone” Monday morning, receiving over three million likes and even getting replies from McDonald’s and Adele.

Monday’s events had a significant impact on business across the world. 

“It halts business for so many brands and individuals as well as cuts of communication to their audience,” Smith said.

Students had mixed opinions about it. Some of them were upset and frustrated.

“Instagram is the only social media I use,” senior Oberhiri Akushe said. “So it wasn’t fun.”

But some of them were not fazed by it and were actually happy about it.

“Much needed, for everyone,” senior Abner Romero Jr. said.

When the problem got resolved, a lot of people were fast to go back on these social media to make up for the time they missed scrolling on these social media. But some people think that this global outage should be taken as a lesson.

“I think all of us can be a bit too obsessed and dedicated to social media platforms,” Smith said. “So some time off is never a bad idea.”