“Social Media Meltdown: What Caused Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram to Plunge into Darkness?”

In a world where Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are practically the lifelines of social interaction, the sudden revelation that they’re down is like finding out your favorite café has run out of coffee. Panic ensues! Tens of thousands of users have reported outages, sending down a collective wave of worry that perhaps—just maybe—the apocalypse is upon us. According to DownDetector, the spike in outage reports represents a mini-crisis for many who have woven their daily chats and updates around these Meta platforms. And let’s be honest, when those apps go dark, it feels a bit like losing power in your house… in the middle of a Netflix binge! Meta has acknowledged the hiccup, assuring users they’re on it, but while we wait, the question remains: how did we become so utterly dependent on a few apps that their brief absence throws us into a state of chaos? If you’re feeling the digital void, you’re not alone. People are flocking to other platforms, sharing memes about their social media woes like it’s an international support group. So, what can you do while you painfully refresh your apps? How about pondering that existential thought while simultaneously scouring the Internet for the latest updates on this social shake-up? LEARN MORE

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have been reported as down by tens of thousands of people as plenty have suffered from services outages.

The website DownDetector has highlighted a sudden spike in reports of the social media and messaging sites going down.

These sites, all owned by Meta, form a cornerstone of social media as it’s where so many people come to talk and share things, and with them going off even just for a short amount of time it’s tantamount to global chaos.

Meta released a statement confirming that some people were having problems.

In a statement posted on X they said: “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 apologise for any inconvenience.”

The Meta sites and the Facebook Messenger service all flagged on DownDetector has having thousands of reports of outages in the past few minutes which frankly is a catastrophe for those of us who rely on them for basic communication.

With so many people easily contactable through these sites their loss has left some flapping around in a panic, barely able to articulate their thoughts, and that’s just here at LADbible Towers.

It’s not great, is it? (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In times like this everyone else hops onto other available social media platforms to talk about their usual places going down.

People said that ‘naturally, everyone’s flocking to Twitter to confirm it’s not just them’, and indeed it is not just you alone in suffering through this, random internet user.

The comforting cavalcade of usual memes are being posted right now so the internet can congregate and commiserate that some parts of it just aren’t working very well right now.

There’s really very little to be done but hang around and keep refreshing your apps until they start working again.

You could crack on with some household chores and do the washing up or put a load of laundry on, but we know you’re going to just stick around on your phone until it’s all working again.

When one of these apps stops working you go to another one to ask if anyone else is having the same problem. (Anna Barclay/Getty Images)

Then suddenly, whoosh, your refreshing appears to work and everything comes back on as though nothing had ever been wrong with it in the first place.

You’ll soon be able to get back on your favourite apps and get back to whatever it was you were doomscrolling before this happened.

It’s funny, you don’t realise how much you rely on these sites until they go down.

It’s like how having a blocked nose when you have a cold makes you really appreciate the joys of breathing through an unobstructed nasal passage that isn’t constantly running with snot.

Or when you develop toothache and forget what it was like to have teeth that didn’t hurt, but the time when it’s all fixed will come again.