Has my Instagram been hacked? Users rage as social media app goes down

INSTAGRAM users have been left shocked after a Meta glitch led them to believe they had been hacked.

Nearly 130,000 users in Britain and the US alone say their Instagram app crashed around 3:30 PM GMT, according to a popular downsite DownDetector.

Users cannot refresh their feed for new content or post.

When refreshing their feed, users are simply told: “Cannot refresh the feed” or “No internet connection”.

When attempting to post, users see the message: “Something went wrong. Please try again later.”

When using the Instagram camera to use effects or create a reel, users will see a pop-up that says: “Failed to load effects. Please check your network connection and try again.”

Has my Instagram been hacked?

Users can’t even see their own photos, which has likely fueled fears of hackers.

“The social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, are currently experiencing an outage,” said one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“If you’re having trouble logging in, don’t panic. You haven’t been hacked (I panicked too).”

Another tweeted: “Is Meta offline or am I being hacked? My Instagram is not loading and my Facebook is also “session logged out”.

When will Instagram be fixed?

The outage has affected both Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.

But it is unclear when both platforms will return to normal operation.

Meta is aware of the issue affecting both Instagram and Facebook.

In a post on X, Andy Stone of Meta wrote: “We are aware that people are having problems accessing our services. We are working on this now.”

This is how you check if Instagram works

Instagram’s official Twitter page is a good first port of call.

The companies InstagramComms page usually tweets all the information about the latest problems and glitches.

Another thing people often do is tweet about their own problems.

So do a search on Twitter, then you will at least know whether it is something that only you experience or something much bigger.

What to do when Instagram is offline

The best thing you can do is restart the app.

Force close Instagram by sliding up and then closing the app so that it closes completely.

See if it loads again.

It could also be a problem with your connection, so see if something else, like a web page, loads for you. If that doesn’t load, there’s a problem with your internet.

And if you’re still having problems after all this, it’s time to find out if you’re on your own.

Search Twitter to see if others are complaining about the same thing.

If you see a bunch of tweets about Instagram going down, you have your answer.

In that case, the only thing you can do is wait until the problem is resolved and check the above options for updates.