If you experienced issues with Instagram yesterday, you are not the only one. Thursday saw thousands of users in the US face difficulties with the popular photo-sharing site due to a widespread outage. Many users reported issues such as being unable to load content, send messages, or refresh their feeds. The problem, which began around 7:00 PM ET, quickly gained attention, with reports surging on Downdetector, a website that tracks service disruptions.
According to Downdetector, the number of reported issues peaked at over 19,400 incidents by 7:25 PM ET, making it one of the more significant Instagram outages in recent months. However, the issue was gradually resolved, and by 8:34 PM ET, the number of reported problems had dropped to 429, suggesting that the platform had restored functionality for most affected users. Despite the widespread impact of the outage, Meta, Instagram’s parent company, has not issued any official statement explaining the cause of the disruption.
Breaking this down, we find that the service disruption mostly affected Instagram’s mobile app, with 56% of reports on Downdetector indicating that the app was not functioning properly. 36% of reports reported issues in logging onto the service, while the remaining 8% of reports dealt with complaints of users being unable to upload content onto the platform. Similarly, while Instagram was the main platform experiencing issues, Facebook, another Meta-owned service, also saw a minor spike in outage reports. By 7:30 PM ET, Downdetector had registered about 500 complaints related to Facebook’s functionality, though these numbers were significantly lower compared to Instagram.
As the night progressed, Instagram’s service gradually stabilized, with the number of user complaints declining steadily. By 9:05 PM ET, most affected users had regained full access to the platform, with only a handful still reporting lingering issues.
Meta has remained silent about the outage, offering no explanation for the cause of the disruption or details on how it was resolved. This is not the first time the company has opted not to communicate with users during service interruptions. Past outages affecting Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp have also been met with similar silence, leading to users airing their frustrations on other social media platforms, like X. Still, given Instagram’s massive global user base, even short outages can have a significant impact. The platform is widely used by businesses, content creators, and influencers who depend on it for engagement, marketing, and communication. Unexpected downtime, especially without an explanation from Meta, can cause disruptions to scheduled content, advertising campaigns, and user interactions.
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