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Instagram outage hits thousands of US users: What really happened
Downdetector reports over 10,000 outage complaints as users faced a brief but widespread outage
- PUBLISHED: Thu 5 Feb 2026, 1:56 PM UPDATED: Fri 6 Feb 2026, 12:00 AM
- By:
- Husain Rizvi
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Thousands of users across the US experienced disruptions on Instagram on Wednesday evening after Meta Platforms’ popular social media service suffered a brief but widespread outage.
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector.com, reports of Instagram issues began surging around 8pm ET. At the peak of the disruption, 10,108 users had reported problems accessing the platform, signalling a significant but short-lived service failure.
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Downdetector, which tracks outages by aggregating user reports from multiple sources, showed that the majority of complaints were linked to Instagram’s website rather than its mobile application. Many users reported difficulty loading pages, error messages, or being unable to access their feeds through desktop browsers.
While the spike in outage reports caused concern among users, the issue appeared to be resolved quickly. By around 9.30pm ET, the number of reported incidents had dropped sharply, indicating that Instagram services were largely restored within an hour of the peak disruption.
During the outage, frustrated users turned to other social media platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter), to share screenshots of error messages and voice their concerns. Some users questioned whether the issue was widespread, while others speculated about possible technical glitches on Meta’s end.
Meta Platforms has not yet released a detailed explanation regarding the cause of the outage. However, brief service disruptions affecting large numbers of users are not uncommon for major social media platforms, given their scale.
