Meta issues statement explaining what caused Facebook and Instagram to go down for millions

Earlier this afternoon (5 March), Facebook and Instagram went down for millions of people across the globe.

The sudden outage sent social media users all over into a complete spiral with many rushing to X, formerly Twitter, over fears they'd been 'hacked'.

Well, to help clear all the speculation up, Meta has finally issued a statement on what exactly caused the whole ordeal.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The chaos started when Facebook and Instagram users tried to access their accounts only to find they had been logged out and unable to log back in.

The outage led many to freak out over the privacy of their accounts, with one X user asking: "Is Meta down or am I being hacked? My Instagram isn’t loading and my Facebook is also 'session logged out'."

A second chimed in: "Is it just me or my Facebook got hacked? I got logged out of my account and I cant login back saying my password is wrong."

"I wondered if I was being hacked too. I just got booted out of Facebook for no reason. I can't log back in. It tells me my password is wrong," a third added.

"POV: You’re on X to make sure your Facebook and Instagram wasn’t hacked," wrote a fourth while a fifth asked: "Did Facebook just get hacked? Anyone else got logged out of their account? What's going on? Oh my!"

Mario Hommes/DeFodi Images via Getty Images

It has since been reported that there were more than 500,000 reports of outages for Facebook, while there were more than 80,000 reports for Instagram, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources, including users.

Luckily, the outage was not a worldwide hacking outbreak but in fact a 'technical issue'.

Shortly after the two social media platform went down, Meta issued an official statement on the matter.

Meta's Communications Director, Andy Stone, tweeted: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services.

"We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

So, there you have it. Panic over!

Topics: Facebook, Instagram, News, Technology, Twitter, UK News, US News, Social media

Rhiannon Ingle

Rhiannon Ingle is a Journalist at LADbible Group. She graduated from the University of Manchester in 2021 in English Literature. Alongside her studies, she was the Lifestyle Editor of The Mancunian, the largest student newspaper in the United Kingdom. Her favourite topics to write about include sex and relationships, bizarre lifestyle trends and all things travel.