Facebook and Instagram are down: Social media sites crash for users across the UK

They’re two of the most popular social media sites, but it seems that both Facebook and Instagram have crashed this afternoon.

According to Down Detector, the issues started at around 14:15 GMT, and are affecting users across the UK.

While the reason for the outage remains unclear, of those who reported issues about Instagram, 74% said they had problems with the News feed, 14% with Stories, and 10% with the website.

Meanwhile, of those who reported issues with Facebook, 65% struggled to log-in, 22% couldn’t see pictures, and 11% had a total blackout.

When trying to access Facebook, some users have been met with an error message, reading: "Facebook is down for required maintenance right now, but you should be able to get back on within a few minutes."

Facebook error message (Facebook)

It's down across the UK (Down Detector)

While the reason for the outage remains unclear, many frustrated users have taken to Twitter to discuss the problems.

One user tweeted: "Anyone else’s Instagram down? Like I got WiFi but it’s saying can’t refresh feed and won’t load stories and my page ain’t loading. Same with Facebook. It won’t let me add people back and can’t refresh the page."

Another wrote: "#instagramdown. Cue all the tweets about having to interact with friends & family."

And one joked: "Black Friday hitting hard on Facebook."

A Facebook spokesperson told Mirror Online: "We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook’s family of apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."

We'll be bringing you the very latest updates, pictures and video on this breaking news story.