Thousands of users reported having problems with Facebook and Instagram since 6pm UK time.

Downdetector, a website that shows whether sites are working, showed over 22,000 reports of Facebook not working in the UK around 6.30pm. In the US this number was over 130,000.

There are reports that the error has also affected Instagram and WhatsApp. More than 10,000 issues with Instagram were reported in the UK while more than 15,000 reported issues with WhatsApp.

Many of the reports in the UK suggested problems in London, Manchester, and Glasgow, although other areas were also affected.

In a statement on the X social media platform, Meta wrote: "We're aware that a technical issue is impacting some users' ability to access our apps.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience."

Sky reports that there were 23,000 reports about Facebook at 6.04pm, with nearly 18,000 reports about WhatsApp at 6.38pm.

The director of network observability company Kentik, Doug Madory, said on rival social media site X: "Unknown technical problem caused a dip in traffic levels to various @Meta services."

He added that it begun at 5.50pm UTC, and that the services "did not go down globally, but suffered a degradation of service for a significant portion of their users".

Forbes is reporting that tens of thousands of Instagram users have reported problems with accessing the site.

There was also a similar spike for WhatsApp and Threads, the magazine says.

After trying to access Facebook, some users have said they were met with a message reading: “We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.”

People have joked online that social media users are "running" to X amid the technical issues.

But some aren't amused.

Matthew Joyce wrote: "Yes, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are down for some people. We don’t need the whole 'everyone flocking to Twitter to see if WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are down' posts."