Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger are down: Everything you need to know about Meta's outage

Man holding phone with Instagram logo on display with a blue background.

Meta ran into some major issues on Wednesday.

Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Threads all went down on Wednesday afternoon with tens of thousands of users reporting that they were unable to use the service or log in.

While service has since been mostly restored as of about 2:30 p.m. Eastern, some issues with direct messaging persist. People have naturally flooded platforms like X to vent their frustrations. Here's a recap of Meta's outage.

A widespread problem

(Image credit: Instagram)

It's a bad day to be addicted social media. Instagram and Meta's entire suite of social apps, including Facebook, Messenger, and Threads, are all down on Tuesday in a major outage affecting all of Meta's major services.

Instagram released an official statement on X following the outage, attributing the outage to a "technical issue."

We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.December 11, 2024

Reports are flooding in

(Image credit: DownDetector)

There's no official cause for the outage yet, but reports peaked at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern on DownDetector, reaching about 75,000 for Instagram and 100,000 for Facebook.

Meta's loss is X's gain

everyone on their way to twitter because facebook & instagram is down.. #facebookdown #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/NmDslagegvDecember 11, 2024

Naturally, people flooded to the nearest social platform to vent their frustrations.

It may be a bad day for Meta, but X is reaping all the benefits.

(Image credit: Future)

Here's what the uploading experience looked like during Instagram's outage at 2:10 p.m. Eastern.

Service returning to normal

(Image credit: Snappa)

Luckily for anyone in desperate need of a doomscroll, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Threads are being restored quickly, though some issues with messages have persisted.

At 2:25 p.m. Eastern, DownDetector reports have gone down steadily and, anecdotally, Laptop Mag staff were able to refresh feeds like normal.

Refreshing direct messages, however, brings up an error message that reads "We're sorry, but something went wrong. Please try that again."