WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram down for users

The popular social media apps stop working for users worldwide

Popular social media apps Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram stopped working for millions of users worldwide on Monday.

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Thousands of users of the apps took to Twitter to complain about the sudden crash. Twitter filled with memes about those turned to the app when the popular communication apps crashed. All the three apps are owned by Facebook.

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WhatsApp said on Twitter that it's working to get things back to normal.

"We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience!" A tweet by WhatsApp said.

Facebook also posted a similar tweet and apologised for the outage.

"We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience," it said.

Instagram urged its users to bear with them. "Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it."

Outage tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington and Paris, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT.

Users trying to access Facebook in affected areas were greeted with the message: "Something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."

"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter.

The outage comes a day after a whistleblower went on US television to reveal her identity after she leaked a trove of documents to authorities alleging the social media giant knew its products were fuelling hate and harming children's mental health.

Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest -- but said in an interview with CBS news show "60 Minutes" that Facebook was "substantially worse" than anything she had seen before.

The world's largest social media platform has been embroiled in a firestorm brought about by Haugen, with US lawmakers and The Wall Street Journal detailing how Facebook knew its products, including Instagram, were harming young girls, especially around body image.