The impact of social media outages on Ghanaian users: A snapshot of the October 2021 Facebook outage event

Abstract

The world would not have become a global village without social media (SM), (Forgeard, 2021). Social media is an internet-based communication that allows billions of people to exchange information and communicate with one another, gain new skills, broaden their knowledge, and engage with their audience/customers (Endo et al., 2017; Lutkevich, 2021; Dollarhide, 2021; Moosa, 2022). Researchers (Endo et al., 2017; Memon et al., 2018; Vidal et al., 2020) have discovered a strong link between excessive social media use and an increased risk of loneliness, anxiety, self-harm, sadness, and even suicidal thoughts in spite of the obvious benefits of social media use.