Instagram experienced a widespread outage early Wednesday, with users reporting major issues accessing direct messages, chat themes, search tools, and contacts. The outage tracking site Downdetector recorded over 10,000 complaints, primarily from the United States, with access problems constituting the majority of reports.
Separately, a study of over 8,000 children suggests that spending more than 30 minutes daily on social media platforms like Instagram is linked to a gradual decline in concentration skills between ages 10 and 14.
The main topics covered are the technical outage affecting Instagram's features and a study on social media's impact on children's concentration.
Users of popular social media platform Instagram reported widespread issues early on Wednesday, majorly of them about not been able to access their DMs and disappearance of chat themes.
Users posted complaints on Instagram's subreddit and other social media sites also about not being able to use the search tool or see contacts.
"Around two hours ago, my message page didn't show any messages at all, even though I have plenty, and I got two notifications earlier," one user wrote.
"My messages, my contacts on Instagram, I can't use the search tool or even scroll up! The whole thing is just broken right now," another user posted. A third said a shared chat theme had vanished from both his and his friend's direct messages.
Outage tracking website Downdetector reported over 10,000 complaints accessing the platform with the spike peaking early morning.
Downdetector monitors outages by aggregating status reports from several sources, including user-submitted complaints, making the actual number of affected users inaccurate.
Around 71% of the complaints were related to problems with access, while 19% related to server connection and 5% of users reported issues with accessing Feed or timeline.
Over 10,000 reports have been registered on Downdetector from the United States while India reported 100 complaints though there has been a recent spike.
Around 170 reports of issues with Instagram came from the UK, with the spike peaking in at around 9.11 am IST.
Meanwhile, children who spend over 30 minutes on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are likely to experience a gradual decline in their ability to concentrate, according to a study of more than 8, 000 children from around age 10 through age 14.
The study was conducted on children with the average time spent on social media, watching videos, and playing video games -- from approximately 30 minutes a day for 9-year-olds to 2.5 hours for 13-year-olds.
Users posted complaints on Instagram's subreddit and other social media sites also about not being able to use the search tool or see contacts.
"Around two hours ago, my message page didn't show any messages at all, even though I have plenty, and I got two notifications earlier," one user wrote.
"My messages, my contacts on Instagram, I can't use the search tool or even scroll up! The whole thing is just broken right now," another user posted. A third said a shared chat theme had vanished from both his and his friend's direct messages.
Outage tracking website Downdetector reported over 10,000 complaints accessing the platform with the spike peaking early morning.
Downdetector monitors outages by aggregating status reports from several sources, including user-submitted complaints, making the actual number of affected users inaccurate.
Around 71% of the complaints were related to problems with access, while 19% related to server connection and 5% of users reported issues with accessing Feed or timeline.
Over 10,000 reports have been registered on Downdetector from the United States while India reported 100 complaints though there has been a recent spike.
Around 170 reports of issues with Instagram came from the UK, with the spike peaking in at around 9.11 am IST.
Meanwhile, children who spend over 30 minutes on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are likely to experience a gradual decline in their ability to concentrate, according to a study of more than 8, 000 children from around age 10 through age 14.
The study was conducted on children with the average time spent on social media, watching videos, and playing video games -- from approximately 30 minutes a day for 9-year-olds to 2.5 hours for 13-year-olds.