Filipinos are considered the world’s heaviest social media users. So when their frequented social media platforms suffered a rather long downtime, many tried to occupy themselves with other things.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users experienced technical issues that significantly affected their overall browsing experience.
Users were unable to send and receive images, view videos and open files. Some pieces of content also refused to load and logging in proved to be a headache on the Facebook-owned platforms.
The upside of a Facebook downtime
Instead of spending their time on the platforms, some Filipinos tried to find other things to do.
Some tried to tap their artistic skills while others thought of personally hanging out with their companions they usually interact with online.
Soooooooo facebook and twitter is down
Sooo
Wuzzup twitter people xD pic.twitter.com/vQurn38oPj
— Lady_Artistic (@Ladydoesarts) July 3, 2019
Social media outage, everyone. Facebook-owned apps are down (Facebook, IG, Whatsapp). We can now go back to reading books and hanging out without the distraction of a phone. Enjoy! <3
— 🌈 MAI #ResistTogether 🌈 (@satanspice_) July 3, 2019
Time to have a real chat in person. Woohoo! see you guys in flesh!! #facebookdown #instagramdown https://t.co/CElC8nN4GH
— Jolly (@joi_jct) July 3, 2019
Outage tracking website Downdetector reported that more than 14,000 Instagram users were affected by the technical issue while more than 7,500 and 1,600 users complained about Facebook and WhatsApp.
Early this morning, Facebook announced it has already resolved the issue and cited it was triggered by one of its routine maintenance operations.
“During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos,” the social media giant stated in its official Twitter business account.
Last March, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp also suffered a global outage that lasted for more than 24 hours and attributed the problem to a “server configuration issue.”
Reports note that people resorted to Twitter and went directly to news websites in order to stay informed of current issues and happenings, among others.
Inquisitr cited a similar incident in August 2018 and discovered that website traffic of news websites surged by 11% during the social media outage.
Other users, meanwhile, resorted to YouTube and gaming sites to pass time, according to Wired.
Filipinos as ultimate netizensÂ
Filipinos are regarded as the world’s heaviest social media users, according to a 2019 report done by a social media platform management application and social media marketing agency.
Hootsuite and We Are Social revealed that an average Filipino user spends 4 hours and 12 minutes on social media platforms.
The figure was astounding compared to the global average time of 2 hours and 16 minutes.
Facebook also emerged as the most popular social media network with its reported monthly active users jumping by 1.7% or 37 million, based on the report.
Sonia Livingstone, a social psychology professor at the London School of Economics, suggested that the large amounts of time dedicated to social networks might have to do with the number of Filipinos working overseas and how they contact their families.
“My guess is that this is a lot of families staying in touch when they’re separated,” she said in an interview.
An online statistics portal predicted that Facebook users in the Philippines are expected to reach 49.9 million by 2023. Three years ago, it reported that Filipino users had reached 41.2 million.
