Is Instagram Down? Latest Update on Direct Message Glitch

Social media users had trouble accessing photo-sharing app Instagram's direct messaging feature on Wednesday.

Downdetector, a site that offers real-time status and outage information on services around the web, saw a spike in complaints of Instagram being inaccessible. Issues were reported in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, and other countries.

With over 1 billion monthly users, stats report that around 12.9 percent of humanity checks into Instagram monthly—the equivalent of the total population of Europe and North America combined. By 2025, it is estimated that there will be 1.44 billion monthly active users of the social platform, which would account for 31.2 percent of global internet users.

Owned by parent company Meta, Instagram was founded in 2010 and was acquired by Facebook, Inc. (now Meta) for $1 billion cash and stock in 2012.

A Meta spokesperson told Newsweek: "Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble with messaging across Messenger, Instagram and Workplace. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Fans of the social media platform took to Twitter to share their stress at not being able to access their favorite features, with multiple people complaining that their direct messaging functionality was not working.

Meta's help center does have a few troubleshooting tips if you're struggling with your Instagram.

They say that it is important to always ensure you are running the latest version of Instagram, and to try restarting your phone or tablet first if you are having issues with the app.

It is also a good idea to try uninstalling and reinstalling the app to see if that will get things started again.

Meta also says that: "Something might not be loading properly because of settings you or someone else set up. Try searching the Help Center for the issue you're experiencing. If this doesn't resolve your problem, it could be a bug or broken feature."

Reports of outage spiked on Tuesday afternoon and have continued to roll in on the Downdetector site since with 92 percent of issues reported related to the app functionality.

On Twitter, users stressed about the sudden drop in service shared their thoughts. "Is anyone still having issues with Instagram?" asked one Twitter user: "It's been like 5 hours and it's still not working."

"Is it me or are Instagram direct messages not working?" said another person.

Meanwhile, other Twitter users have taken the opportunity to crack some jokes. One Twitter user wrote: "Instagram DMs are working perfectly fine, she's just not replying bro."

This comes less than a month after an Instagram stories glitch frustrated users by causing stories to repeat and start over, despite having already been viewed.

Update 07/07/22 at 3 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from Meta.