Let’s hear this one: You wake up one fine morning, and while cuddling with your phone in your hand, you feel, well, there is no internet connection. No Google, no WhatsApp, no social media notifications. Sounds terrifying, right? Well, it should. Today, the internet has made an essential presence in our lives, whether it is personal or professional. Okay, while presenting, let me also declare this: So, what if one fine day the internet just decided to pack up and quit?

Businesses, especially those with operations dependent on cloud computing infrastructures, would be in a state of confusion. Tools such as Zoom, Slack, and emails become pointless. No, it’s not about means like sending a funny meme the other day; it is about losing fundamental services that keep the contemporary workplace moving. So even if you think you’d ‘just relax’ without the internet, don’t think so because it is not like that.

But, of course, the big question everyone is asking is the elephant in the room— social media. For real, all of us spend an unhealthy number of hours scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, among others. Is it true that a day without the internet will strip us of feeling connected as if someone has just ripped off the lifeline? It became impossible to imagine life without aimlessly scrolling through a feed, looking at pretty pictures. The addiction is true, and if you try to stop, the side effects will be felt as soon as the next day.

That leads me to the final major factor, which is social media—the elephant in the room, as many people call it. Guys, let’s face it—the majority of us are junkies of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok. Just imagine experiencing a day with no internet; it’s the same as if one has chopped off our source of life. Imagine the world without scrolling through newly Instagrammed posts unconsciously. The substance addiction is real, and if the test subject tried to remove the substances from his system, he would immediately experience the withdrawal symptoms.

But here is the rub that people cannot escape—social networking has now made us more ‘connected’ than ever, but a day without it might point out to us how disconnected from reality we have become. And let’s be honest, that is something most people are not capable of; they don’t even know where to start.

Think about it. In how many cases do we, the people of this generation, recall the last time we physically used a map? As a culture, we assume that our go-to app—Google Maps—will lead us from the starting point to the final destination. By not having access to the internet, all of a sudden you don’t have GPS and no real-time traffic reports. We rely on technology so much that we have outsourced everything, including our hard-wired brains, and we can do nothing without it.

Different television channels, newspapers, and magazines that relay current events mean their operations become paralysed. No internet, no online newspapers—it means no instant updates. There would be a lot of distortion because news would circulate slowly—especially wrong news about the enemy. Who's going to verify these facts when Google does not exist? Who will verify the facts?

But hey, it’s not only news that would be affected—your entertainment would, too. No more Disney, no more Netflix, no YouTube, no Spotify. In total, people would have one day where no one had to do anything productive or even look for food and splurge a fortune for it. Read a book? Play a board game? Talk to your family. The rest of us could hardly even start, let alone get through it. This just shows how we depend on the internet for so many things, including just killing time.

Well, some people may think that being without the internet for a day is not a bad thing; in fact, it is a ‘day off from digital.’ Sure, maybe. But let’s not kid ourselves. That one day without the internet would be enough to make us realise our complete and total reliance on it for every facet of life, from communication to work and play, even eating. It may briefly make us understand how unstable our system is, but without it, most of us wouldn’t be able to fully perform our daily tasks.

Thus, the next time you are complaining about slow connectivity or a website that takes too long to load, just think of how you would make do without the internet. It is not just about losing your access to memes or videos—it is more of a loss of a structure that has the backbone of today’s society. Finding ourselves offline isn’t a small problem; it’s a disaster that is likely to occur on any given day.