We are living in a time of shortage.

We have struggled with the amount of chicken, carbon dioxide, beer in Wetherspoon, sausage rolls in Greggs and petrol.

Like everything in life it has also moved online. We have seen outages of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

I noticed the last one first. I’d been enjoying a cup of tea without the phone annoying me and demanding my attention so I knew something must be wrong.

I looked online and saw that people were reporting the photograph sharing platform Instagram was down. I was worried.

Millennials could starve to death sat in front of a meal because they couldn’t post pictures of it.

I don’t really understand the obsession with letting the world know about your food.

In my generation it would have required buying a roll of 35mm film, taking pictures of my dinner, finishing the rest of the roll of film by taking other needless photos, taking the film into town to be developed, waiting a few days and then finally I could show people what I about to eat.

It would be cold by then.

I grew up thinking that making people look at your holiday snaps was boring but these days we expect people to care about the state of our lunch.

I then realised that Facebook was gone too. I don’t use Facebook much, which has led to people being angry with me.

I once asked an acquaintance how their trip to America was and he looked offended.

He presumed I’d read all about the trouble he’d had with the journey and was asking sarcastically.

I’ve been out with people on lovely walks and they take the time to post something for to their Facebook page for the people who aren’t there.

We are living our lives as publishers more concerned with the readers of our content than the people we are with.

Did you notice how much better life was during the blackouts?

You didn’t have to worry how many of your friends were liking your posted photos out of politeness.

You didn’t have your peace shattered with someone sending round the latest meme about COVID vaccines.

You didn’t have anxiety about your body after seeing the latest Instas by the hot and skilled at Photoshop.

Facebook said the issue was down to a configuration change as it apologised to its billions of users. It did this via Twitter, which was funny in itself.

There is no need to apologise.

If the downtime taught some of us that using these platforms even a little bit less could help you enjoy life more we should thank them.