Social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down amid a widespread Meta outage.

Website Downdetector, which monitors where there are issues with websites and apps, showed large spikes for Facebook and other Meta apps with people saying they had been affected by the outage. According to Downdetector, Facebook outages were first reported at about 6pm today and have reached more than 100,000 complaints of an issue.

Users also complained about having issues with Instagram with 11,891 being registered by Downdetector since 6pm. Both social media apps are operated by Meta.

Several Meta social media platforms have faced issues today (
Image:
AFP via Getty Images)

WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, saw numerous reported disruptions around the same time frame today. According to the Downdetector website there were more than 9,600 outage reports since 6pm.

Many users in the US were among those who made complaints, although the issue appears to have affected others around the globe.

A Meta spokesperson shared the following statement with The Mirror: "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 apologize for any inconvenience."

There have been numerous instances of Meta and other social media apps having issues and reporting outages. Earlier this year Facebook users suffered an outage after they were met with log in errors.

Tens of thousands of social media users complained about not being able to access their favourite social media apps (
Image:
Anadolu via Getty Images)

Mark Zuckerberg previously apologised after Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram went down for nearly six hours in October 2021. During the outage, potentially billions of people were left wihtout access to the social media tools they heavily relied on for communication with friends and family.

The repercussions also extended to Mark Zuckerberg at the time, with an estimated $6 billion (£4.4 billion) loss in his personal fortune as Facebook shares experienced a sharp decline. Zuckerberg wrote in a post: "Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now. Sorry for the disruption today -- I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about."