Instagram down

Instagram and Facebook Are Down: The Good News is, You Can Still Call Aunt Linda!

Facebook and Instagram users report outages—#InstagramDown trends on social media! Don't panic yet, here's what we know!

On Wednesday afternoon, social media users had their hearts racing as reports flooded in about widespread outages on Facebook and Instagram. Thousands of users in major cities like Chicago and Los Angeles took to other platforms, notably X (formerly known as Twitter), to voice their frustrations and share the hashtag #InstagramDown. According to Downdetector, the situation quickly escalated with over 27,000 reports of issues with Facebook and more than 28,000 for Instagram by around 12:50 p.m. ET. The culprit? No one knows just yet, but for many, this was their first taste of a digital detox—whether they wanted it or not!

Not only were Facebook and Instagram users reporting problems, but the chaos didn't stop there. Users of WhatsApp, Threads, and even Oculus were also caught in the web of outages. With problems reported as far reaching as areas of New York and across the Midwest, it seemed like Meta was having a bad day, leaving everyone wondering—was it a routine maintenance check or a digital apocalypse? Whatever the reason, users were quick to share memes and gifs, some lightheartedly suggesting a rage against the social media machine while others were panicking about how to get their daily dose of influencers and cat videos.

By 2:30 p.m., users reported the number of outages for Facebook and Instagram had eased, with about 18,000 issues still logged for Facebook and a similar drop for Instagram. Some users had already resorted to activities such as talking to their family in real life—gasp! To be fair, for many individuals whose social media is a lifeline to family and friends, it must have felt like losing a part of their identity, akin to trying to find a missing sock in the laundry.

In the grand scheme of things, let’s remember: while the digital world can feel imperative to our daily lives, there’s still an entire world out there. If this outage proves anything, it's that perhaps we should all step outside, or return to those beloved phone calls with friends and family—who knew good old-fashioned conversation was still a thing? As for Meta, this is just another day under the sun—let’s just hope the tech giants get their ducks in a row before the next big influencer post needing a prime audience!

On a lighter note, did you know that the average person spends around two hours a day on social media? That adds up to over five years of a person’s life! That's almost as long as it would take to train for a marathon—though let’s be real, did you really need that latte art tutorial instead of some good cardio? Remember from this incident that a day without social media is an opportunity to venture out and enjoy life... or, at the very least, catch up on those laundry mountains—happy folding!