Instagram users around the world said they were having trouble with direct messages on Wednesday morning (March 11).
Many people turned to other platforms to report that messages weren’t sending or loading properly.
Data from DownDetector — which tracks real-time service disruptions — suggested the problem started in the early morning hours for users in the US.
At the height of the reports, more than 13,000 people logged complaints, with roughly three-quarters coming from those using the app.
DownDetector’s figures also indicated reports surged by 56,000 percent compared with the usual baseline.
The site’s outage map showed multiple US cities registering issues, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Washington and New York.
India also saw a spike, with around 1,300 reports submitted at the peak there.
On Reddit, users in the r/Instagram community compared notes to see whether others were experiencing the same issue.
“Is it just my phone or [are] y’all having the same problem? ‘Failed to load earlier messages’ DMs not working,” one user asked.
“Okay same here I’m so annoyed,” one person responded. “I was just sending reels back and forth and not only can I not send them, I cannot see what I’m being sent. Annoying.”
“This is weird!! Hope it gets fixed soon!! None of my messages are sending,” a second said.
“For a moment, I thought they blocked me for no apparent reason,” a third added.
The conversation also spread to Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter.
what’s up with insta dms pic.twitter.com/XEEkw31op5
— shaun (@dumpsters0up) March 11, 2026
“Am I trippin or Instagram trippin… dms won’t load or send or refresh,” one user said, as a second said: “What’s up with Insta DMs?” along with a screenshot of an error message.
DemandSage estimates Instagram has 3 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million daily active users.
India is said to have the biggest audience on the platform, with 413.8 million users, while the US has around 171.7 million.
Other Meta-owned services, including WhatsApp and Facebook, did not appear to be affected at the time.
Meta had not issued a public statement addressing the reported DM issues.
The disruption follows other high-profile internet problems in recent months, including a Cloudflare outage that caused widespread issues.
During the November 18 incident, platforms such as X, Facebook and Letterboxd were among the services impacted.
DownDetector was also affected during that period, making it harder for users to confirm whether problems were widespread or limited to their own connection.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the issue was not caused ‘by a cyber attack or malicious activity of any kind,’ and was instead linked to a permissions change involving one of the company’s database systems.
Another outage occurred weeks later, disrupting services including Canva, Zoom and LinkedIn.