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Update: 5:55 p.m. ET: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are slowly but surely coming back up after more than 6 hours of being down. Your mileage may vary for now, but the services are in the process of coming back to life.

Update 4:30 p.m ET: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp have now been down for five hours. In the latest update, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer says that Facebook is “experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore.” There is, however, no timeline on when to expect the services to come back online.

Head below for a potential explanation…

It’s not just you: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all currently down for users around the world. We’re seeing error messages on all three services across iOS applications as well as on the web. Users are being greeted with error messages such as: “Sorry, something went wrong,” “5xx Server Error,” and more.

Facebook is continuing to ramp up its efforts to deepen integration between Facebook and Instagram. This time, the company has announced a handful of updates to Facebook Messenger, including group cross-app communication for communicating with contacts from both Messenger and Instagram in one group.

Facebook has attempted to defuse the controversy over its Instagram teen research by releasing two of the reports to the public, annotating them with what it says is important context.

The social network also accuses the WSJ, which obtained copies of the reports, of “mischaracterizing” their conclusions. The paper has not yet directly responded to that accusation, but has instead shared four more reports that Facebook did not make public …

Facebook says it will make public two Instagram teen research presentations, following claims that these showed the app to be “toxic” to teenage girls.

The controversy over the studies has now reached Congress, with Facebook’s head of safety being called to testify before the Senate later this week …

Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, announced today that Facebook is pausing its Instagram for Kids project and building new parental supervision tools.

An internal report describes a number of ways in which Instagram is harmful to as many as 20% of teenage girls using the app. It can increase anxieties about physical attractiveness, social image, and money, and even increase suicide risk, according to Facebook’s own research.

However, the social network says that the leaked report has been misunderstood …

Instagram has just released an update for its iOS app in the App Store that fixes two annoying bugs. The new version fixes the bug that resulted in Stories with no audio on iOS 15 and layout issues for iPhone 13 users.

It’s 2021 and Instagram still doesn’t have an iPad app. Instead, users are forced to choose between the subpar web or iPhone app experiences. In a new question and answer session this weekend, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri addressed the continued lack of an iPad app, and it doesn’t sound like things are changing anytime soon…

Over the past few days, Apple Music users have been complaining that they are seemingly no longer able to share songs on Instagram Stories. Here’s the fix for this bug.

Instagram announced on Wednesday a new search system for its mobile app that will show suggestions for photos and videos instead of just user accounts, hashtags, and places. The feature, which is still under implementation, will make it easier to discover new posts about what the user is looking for — and looks a lot like what TikTok already offers.

Facebook published today two articles about how to create a safer experience for young people on Instagram as well as how the company verifies whether someone is the appropriate age required to be on its platforms.

Instagram has today announced the ability to automatically translate text in story posts. The app has been able to translate text in posts and captions since 2016, and it’s now added this feature to Stories.

Since Facebook acquired Instagram back in 2012, the company has made a handful of changes to make its ownership clear. Now, according to a new report from Engadget, Facebook is testing putting a new banner at the top of the Instagram app that invites users to check out… Facebook.