Unless you're one of the few who don't have social media, you probably noticed that your Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram apps weren't working on December 11. It turned out that Meta went through a widespread outage later that morning and afternoon. For hours, businesses, influencers and other users wondered when the apps would be back up.

Meta shared a statement via X that day, tweeting that the company was "aware that a technical issue is impacting some users' ability to access our apps." Meta added, "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and apologize for any inconvenience."

Instagram also issued a statement via X acknowledging the issue.

In its official X statement, Meta noted that it was experiencing a "technical issue" that was "impacting some users' ability to access our apps," including Facebook. The company did not specify what the issue was.

In true Instagram fashion, the platform's X account included the hashtag "instagramdown" in its acknowledgement of the problem. However, the "technical issue" that Instagram cited was not specified.

"Hi, we know there's a technical issue impacting some people's ability to access Instagram," the account's X account tweeted. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience."

According to DownDetector, more than 70,000 users complained of problems with Instagram after 11:00 a.m. ET on December 11.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were also experiencing problems for users.

As of 4:00 p.m. ET, many users reported that their Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram apps were back up and running. Additionally, the reports on DownDetector decreased after 1:00 p.m.