Facebook and Instagram went down for thousands of users, with Downdetector recording more than 17,000 Facebook reports and over 5,000 Instagram reports before the services began recovering.
Facebook and Instagram were reportedly down for thousands of users in the US on Monday, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector. Downdetector recorded more than 17,000 reports of problems with Facebook, while Instagram recorded more than 5,000 reports around the same period.
Most Facebook complaints involved difficulties accessing the website. Users reported seeing a white screen or a page stuck on the Facebook logo without loading further. Some users also reported problems logging into the app.
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According to outage reports, the number of Facebook complaints peaked at more than 17,400 around 9:15 pm ET before beginning to decline around 9:45 pm ET.
The outage map showed reports from several major US locations, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and Florida.
Outage reports spread beyond the US
Reports on social media and other online platforms indicated that users in several other regions, including Mexico, parts of Europe and Asia, also experienced problems.
Reddit users reported issues from countries including the Philippines and Canada.
Some users said that multiple Meta platforms were affected, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, with websites and apps becoming stuck on their respective logos.
Facebook and Instagram appear to recover
Reports of problems with both Facebook and Instagram began declining after the initial surge. Some users also said the services had started working again.
By around 9:50 pm ET, the issues appeared to have largely been resolved, although individual users could still have experienced problems.
Downdetector tracks service disruptions by compiling reports from users and other sources. A spike in reports indicates an increase in reported problems but does not by itself establish the technical cause of an outage.
What caused the outage?
No official explanation for the disruption was immediately available in the information provided. Meta had not publicly identified a cause at the time of the reports.
The incident affected users trying to access some of the company's most widely used social-media services, but the available reports indicated that the disruption was temporary.
The incident highlights how disruptions to major social-media platforms can affect large numbers of users simultaneously. Downdetector provides an early indication of service problems through user reports, while the actual cause and scale of an outage can only be confirmed by the service provider.
The reported recovery of Facebook and Instagram suggests that the disruption was temporary, but further information from Meta would be needed to establish what caused the problem and whether all affected services were fully restored.
Published: 21 Sept 2026, 08:06 am IST
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