Instagram Experiences Widespread Outage, Thousands Affected in the U.S.

Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), suffered a major outage on Thursday evening, leaving thousands of users in the U.S. unable to access the platform. According to Downdetector, a site that tracks service disruptions, over 19,000 users reported issues as of 7:25 p.m. ET.

The outage sparked frustration among users, many of whom took to other social media platforms to voice their concerns. Downdetector gathers outage reports from multiple sources, including user submissions and social media mentions, to track service disruptions in real-time.

Meta has not yet issued an official statement on the cause of the outage or when normal service will resume. Temporary glitches on social media platforms are common, but large-scale disruptions like this one tend to attract significant attention, especially when they impact millions of users.

Instagram, one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, boasts over 2 billion active users globally. Even brief service interruptions can have a substantial impact, particularly for businesses, influencers, and advertisers who rely on the platform for engagement.

With no immediate updates from Meta, affected users are advised to check Downdetector or Instagram’s official channels for further information.