Every Facebook-owned app was down Monday in a widespread outage

• Several Facebook apps appeared to suffer an outage on Monday.
• Users reported having issues accessing Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger on Downdetector.
• The outage spanned multiple countries, according to user reports.

Facebook suffered a major outage across several countries on Monday for more than 5 hours.

Users reported having issues accessing Facebook apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook itself on the website Downdetector, which tracks outages and issues across various websites and services.

The issues began around 11:45 a.m. ET on Monday, according to user reports on Downdetector. They appeared to affect users in many countries around the world.

In a tweet addressing the outage, Facebook said, "We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Instagram also addressed the outage on Twitter, saying, "Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we're on it! #instagramdown"

In a tweet shortly after the surge in outage reports, WhatsApp said, "We're aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We're working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!"

Messenger tweeted about the outage as well, saying, "Mercury in retrograde got the best of us. We're working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and apologize for the inconvenience. #MessengerDown"

The company's services began to return online before 6 pm ET.

Downdetector had received more than 86,000 user reports of Facebook outages since 11:25 a.m. ET on Monday, according to its website. Of these issues, 79% were related to Facebook's website, 12% were related to server connections, and 9% were related to the app.

There were more than 76,000 user reports of Instagram outages, more than 21,000 user reports of WhatsApp outages, and more than 6,000 user reports of Messenger outages in the same span, according to Downdetector.

The New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac tweeted that the outage was also affecting Facebook's internal platforms, so its employees can't work right now. The Instagram chief Adam Mosseri tweeted that "it does feel like a snow day."

A visit to Facebook's webpage spurred a message that reads, "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."

When attempting to load Instagram's web page, a "5xx Server Error" message popped up.