Facebook and Instagram back up and running after outages

Facebook, Instagram and Messenger appear to be back up and running after Meta apps and websites went down for around an hour.

Reporting sites such as Downdetector showed a huge spike in users experiencing difficulties around the world.

The Meta sites and applications went down around 3.30pm today, Tuesday, March 5.

WhatsApp, which is also owned by the online giant, however, appeared to be functioning normally.

The issue appeared to be hitting users around the world.

Its own status page suggested the products are experiencing major disruptions.

"We are aware of an issue impacting Facebook Login. Our engineering teams are actively looking to resolve the issue as quickly as possible," it said.