Is Facebook Down (Or Is It Just You)? Here's How To Tell
Facebook, much like any other social media platform that has an incredibly high daily user count, is bound to run into technical difficulties, likely due to the labor-intensive process of maintaining fully functioning servers big enough to accommodate a massive surge of activity happening all at once. It could also be caused by minor hiccups due to features being beta-tested behind the scenes. Some of these inevitable issues may affect only a small portion of users, while others may plague the entire platform, causing a complete outage.
Of course, it's also posible to experience glitches that are true only for the individual. Perhaps internet connectivity is spotty, or maybe there's something wrong with the mobile device the Facebook app is being accessed from. No matter what's causing the platform to go down on your end, there's a multitude of ways to find out whether it's a site-wide mishap or just an isolated incident.
Below are some places online you can check to see if Facebook is down. These suggestions also apply to checking if Instagram is down, since it's Facebook's sister company.
Visit a third-party website
The quickest and most tried-and-true way to find out if other people are encountering issues with popular social media platforms like Facebook is by searching for it on Google. Simply typing, "Is Facebook down?" should produce a variety of useful results, including outage-monitoring platforms like DownDetector or DownForEveryoneOrJustMe. Visiting one of these third-party websites should bring you to a page summarizing user reports detailing any recent Facebook-related problems that they've encountered.
Of course, since these reports are essentially crowdsourced, it's possible that not all affected parties are actually hopping on the site to report their Facebook issues, ergo, it's not a verifiable indicator of whether the bug you're attempting to resolve is indeed site-wide. You can, however, glean enough information from the number of reports that have been recently submitted. The higher the number, the more likely it is that Facebook is aware of the problem and in the process of working on it. In addition, if there are any recently posted user comments that outline Facebook issues similar to yours, it might also be an indication that at the very least, the feature giving you trouble is broken for a lot more people, too.
See if other users are complaining on online forums
What's another thing people tend to do when they encounter a problem on an app like Facebook? Apart from checking outage detection services, they also are likely to post about it on their working social media accounts. A place worth looking into is r/Facebook on Reddit. With over 100,000 members, chances are high that a person there will share a post detailing a similar Facebook error they've encountered recently, including screenshots.
X, formerly Twitter, is another platform Facebook users often visit so they can complain about the latter platform and mention any issues they may have run into while using the app. Looking up the phrase "is facebook down" or the hashtag #facebookdown should return tweets from people discussing whatever hiccup they ran into. Depending on the number of results shared within the last couple of hours and how many of those discuss the same error, it's quite possible that Facebook is down for many users.
Through either Reddit or X, you might get lucky with one of the comments that may include potential solutions that could fix your problem with the Facebook website or app. However, if the glitch is a lot more serious, a fix volunteered by a common user is highly unlikely to work. It's best to wait for Facebook to officially address it.
Can you check through Facebook's official social media accounts?
In an ideal world, any problems affecting the Facebook platform and any of its features would be addressed by the company's official online channels, especially if the errors are rendering the app unusable. If the latter is true, announcements won't be on Facebook but will probably be on other social media platforms where Facebook has an official business profile. Unfortunately, none of Facebook's or Meta's official X accounts seem to be the go-to for technical support these days. In fact, several complaints from Twitter/X users that have problems with their Facebook accounts mostly have to do with the glaring lack of an account to tweet at that's dedicated to providing solutions to outages and other features that don't work.
The closest thing Meta has to documenting any outages related to the company's numerous products is the MetaStatus page. However, this page is limited to only business and developer tools that aren't necessarily utilized by the common Facebook user. If you happen to be an administrator of a business page on Facebook, this is where you can check if features like Meta Business Suite or Facebook Shops are up and running.
Other things you can do when Facebook isn't working for you
If you've given up trying to reach out to Facebook via other social media platforms or have done so but have not received a timely response, you can take matters into your own hands and try to figure out what's going on with your Facebook account on your own.
The best place to check for guidance is Facebook's own Help Center. It has a section specifically discussing what you can do when something isn't working on the platform. You can report any broken features and describe the issue you're having in detail. To help Facebook address errors quicker, include screenshots of the error or consider recording your screen.
You can also try one of the many troubleshooting tips Facebook has provided for problems related to using the platform on a computer or mobile device. Most of these methods involve updating the app, clearing your browser or app cache, restarting your device, or refreshing your internet connection. In most cases, these should get rid of basic hangups with Facebook.
Lastly, when all else fails, regardless of whether or not Facebook is down for everyone, sometimes the only thing you can really do is wait it out. Site-wide issues are usually top priority on Facebook's backend and should be resolved by the end of the day at the most. While waiting, you can hop on Instagram (or any other social media platform) or better yet, use the Facebook bug as a reason to digitally detox for the time being.