The majority of the social media world came to a halt on Monday with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all down, causing panic for many social media managers and digital marketing professionals across the globe.

Nowadays, social media is the main way you drive and advertise your business, whether a large corporate or a small local enterprise.

A significant amount of us also uses social media outside of work, with most people documenting what they get up to at the weekend, who they have bumped into, or a new bar or restaurant they have tried out. It is a way for many of us to keep tabs on friends and family, without having to make active contact.

Our brains have been rewired to check notifications first thing in the morning or whenever we have a pocket of free time, and a lot of us (myself included) spending a significant amount of time scrolling through our feeds aimlessly, without really engaging our brains.

The danger of social media that has come to light in recent years is that it can paint a fake or rose-tinted view of the world, with many only posting about the best parts of their life online, leading many of us to unhealthily compare or not recognise the often more complicated reality behind the smokescreen.

The black out of some of the main social platforms allowed a lot of us to switch off from that world. Rather than WhatsApp-ing our family and friends, we had to pick up the phone and speak to them. Rather than seeing what other people were up to that evening, we could focus on what we wanted to do, without any need of consolidating our activities by putting up an Instagram story.

It forced us to completely switch up our daily routines that we didn’t even know we had, and to also change our mindset from having to show others what we were up to, to just enjoying what we are doing in the moment.

There have been many benefits cited from having regular detoxes from social media, including improved self-esteem, reduction in anxiety, conquering your fear of FOMO (fear of missing out) and much more.

This sudden absence of the social channels has reminded a number of us to have a break occasionally, in order to reconnect and regroup, and rediscover what really makes us tick.

Social media is a key part of many of our lives and shows no sign of slowing down. With more and more things becoming digital and the platforms only getting bigger, we can take back some control for ourselves by having a digital detox and going back to basics every once in a while.

Now...I'm off for a sea swim.