Facebook and Instagram go down for the second time in 72 hours

| Senior science and technology reporter Published July 22, 2026 1:32pm Updated July 22, 2026 2:26pm The social media platforms are owned by tech giant Meta (Picture: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Facebook and Instagram briefly went down for the second time since Sunday. The outage, which began at around 12.45pm, at its peak impacted more than 5,000 users across the two social media platforms. Of them, as of 1pm, 4,400 were struggling to access Facebook, while nearly 600 were reporting issues with Instagram. Around 300 people reported issues with using Facebook Messenger as well, according to Downdetector, which monitors internet disruptions. Most users had issues using the mobile apps, such as being stuck on an error page when trying to log in. I thought I was the only one facing this issue 🤣🤣 I thought someone has taken over my page 🤣🤣— Barça World💙❤️ (@ShadrachGh) July 22, 2026 One Facebook user said: ‘Urgh down again. Getting, “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”‘ ‘Instagram stop breaking down every three days,’ another user added. Thousands of users in the US and Spain also experienced problems. Is Facebook or Instagram still down? For some, yes. Complaints about the apps began to die off around 1.40pm, with only 100 outage reports for Facebook and around 310 for Instagram. Meta, which owns the social media platforms as well as WhatsApp, is reporting no known issues on its status page. The worldwide outage on Sunday peaked at around 9am, with 5,200 Facebook users in the UK unable to access their accounts or share posts. Accessing the desktop version of Facebook or Instagram led to an error message (Picture: Meta) Users loading the desktop versions of the platforms were told their accounts are ‘temporarily unavailable’. ‘Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue,’ the message said. ‘We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.’ Meta has been approached for comment. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: Count Binface demands Sega bring back its London arcade and make Shenmue 4 Arrow MORE: Cow-loving dog ‘moos’ instead of barking Arrow MORE: Fans troll PS5 summer sale as ‘only renting’ games instead of selling them News Updates Stay on top of the headlines with daily email updates.