I lost years of my digital life in a matter of seconds.
And it taught me something I never expected technology to teach me:
Never build your entire life on a platform you don't control.
Story time....
It was a mid-morning in early July.
I had finished my morning routine and, like I had done countless times before, picked up my phone to catch up on WhatsApp.
Messages from family.
Friends checking in.
Business conversations.
Tasks waiting for me.
Then, out of nowhere, a warning appeared:
“This account violates WhatsApp’s age requirement. Go to Facebook.”
I followed the instruction.
Facebook asked me to confirm my identity.
One click
I tapped it.
No documents needed. No long verification process.
A few hours later...
My Facebook account was permanently disabled.
And suddenly, I couldn't properly access the digital world I had spent years building.
For someone who is non verbal, this wasn't simply losing a social media account.
WhatsApp is almost my main important communication channel.
My family is there.
My friends are there.
My business relationships are there.
Years of conversations and connections are there.
Imagine having thousands of digital connections accumulated over years and then watching access to them disappear almost instantly.
I panicked.
I reached out to friends and relatives, asking if I could access their Facebook or Instagram accounts so I could purchase Meta Verified and hopefully reach support.
That didn't work.
So I created new accounts.
Then came the support battle
Case after case.
Almost every day.
I kept trying to explain what had happened and find a way to recover my accounts.
Some cases went nowhere.
Some were ignored.
Eventually, I started investigating my own digital history.
And I discovered something uncomfortable:
I had created my Facebook account when I was under 13, back in Grade 6.
Perhaps that history eventually caught up with the account.
Perhaps automated systems flagged it.
Whatever the exact reason, the experience made me think deeply about our relationship with technology.
As a tech professional, I spend a huge part of my life behind screens.
I work through them.
Communicate through them.
Build through them.
Connect through them.
But losing access to those platforms reminded me of something we often forget:
There is life outside the screen.
A life without statuses.
Without notifications.
Without constantly checking whether someone has replied.
Without algorithms deciding what we see and, sometimes, what we can access.
And strangely...
That world is peaceful.
Technology has made our lives incredibly convenient, but it has also made our digital identities incredibly important.
Maybe too important.
So here's what I'm taking away from this experience:
#- Don't rely on a single platform for critical communication.
#- Keep important contacts backed up offline.
#- Preserve important memories outside social media.
#- Have alternative ways of reaching the people who matter.
#- And most importantly, don't forget to live beyond the screen.
Because platforms can change.
Accounts can disappear.
Algorithms can make decisions.
Support systems can fail.
But the relationships we've built offline?
Those are much
harder to delete.
Maybe the biggest lesson from losing my digital world...
...was remembering that I still have a real one