Meta is adding new safeguards and monitoring tools for teens across its social platforms: parental controls on Messenger, suggestions for teens to step away from Facebook after 20 minutes, and nudges urging young night-owl Instagrammers to stop scrolling.

The features announced Tuesday come as Meta and other social media platforms face heightened pressure from lawmakers over the impact that their platforms have on younger users, who can be just 13 when they sign up for Meta's apps.

Messenger, Meta’s instant-messaging app, is adding parental supervision tools for the first time that are similar to those that exist on Instagram already: Parents and guardians can see how much time their teens spend on the chat tool, view and receive updates on their contacts list, and get notified if their teen reports someone.

Another new feature is the ability for parents and teens to have discussions directly through notifications if their accounts are synced up.

“We heard from parents and teens about the value they’re seeing from how a two-way dialogue can foster and encourage discussions,” Diana Williams, who oversees product changes for youth and families at Meta, told CNN in an interview.

On Facebook, Meta will start to nudge teen users to take time away from the app after 20 minutes.

Instagram will add introduce a new nudge that suggests teens close Instagram if they’re scrolling Reels videos for too long during nighttime hours. The effort builds on existing Instagram features like Quiet Mode, which temporarily holds notifications and lets people know if you’re trying to focus.

In addition, Instagram is testing a feature that limits how people interact with non-followers. Users must now send an invite to connect with someone if they’re not a follower, and they cannot call the recipient or send photos, videos or voice messages or make calls until the user accepts their request. The feature aims to cut down on unwanted content from strangers, particularly for women, the company said.

It’s the latest in a series of new tools and guardrails for teens from Meta, following the release of leaked internal documents that found Instagram can negatively impact the mental health of its young users. Instagram, for example, has since introduced an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety.

The company said it’s also taking a “stricter approach” to the content it recommends to teens and will actively nudge them toward different topics, such as architecture and travel destinations, if they’ve been dwelling on any type of content for too long.

Few changes have been made to Facebook and Messenger until now. Facebook does, however, have a Safety Center that provides supervision tools and resources, such as articles and advice from leading experts.

Twitter has been sued over Elon Musk's plan to lay off around half of the company's staff, after purchasing the social network for around $44 billion dollars.

Bloomberg News reported that a class-action lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court.

The outlet reported that a similar lawsuit by Tesla workers was labeled as "trivial" by the billionaire.

The lawyer that filed the suit against Twitter Inc. said it was being done "pre-emptively," just as the mass layoffs were set to move forward.

The lawyer said she is "pleased" that she found out Twitter employees will continue to be paid until Jan. 4, Bloomberg reported.

Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said Friday Musk "is making an effort to comply" with the legal matter.

Liss-Riordan said in the suit that Twitter is violating federal and California statutes.

Friday, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts insisted that Twitter reveal its process for verifying users who pay for a subscription.

A Washington Post reporter, with Markey's permission, set up a fake account impersonating the Senator under the username @realedmarkey.

After paying the subscription fee the account received a blue verification mark, The Hill reported.

In a letter from Markey to Twitter's new CEO, Elon Musk, the Senator heavily criticized the platform's process and launch of the new feature which allows users to pay for a blue check mark that is meant to verify their authenticity.

Twitter appeared to have paused the program shortly after the Washington Post ran the test.

Sen. Markey wrote in a letter, “Allowing an imposter to impersonate a U.S. Senator on Twitter is a serious matter that you need to address promptly.”

Markey asked Musk to respond to his inquiry by Nov. 25 regarding how an impersonation was allowed.

CNBC and other outlets said that Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.

At 62, Helen Polise isn't considering retirement. Not remotely. Her job? TikTok star.

Polise's account "The Muthership" has nearly 1 million followers. She started the account during the pandemic as a distraction and a way to have fun — but soon it became a second career in the making.

"Some people would ask me, oh, how did you do that transition? How did you figure that out? So, I said, I'll make a tutorial for you. And that was the turning point in social media for me," Polise said.

She's now making money through paid tutorials teaching others how to use TikTok. She hopes to begin phasing out her other job as a TV commercial director so TikTok can become her full-time gig.

Her background commercials helped her understand how to produce for TikTok, Polise said: She transferred what she already knew to a smaller screen.

"I'm really good at technology. Probably a better than a lot of young people," she added. "I want to highlight that it's OK to get older. I feel more authentic. I'm not afraid to be myself,"

Authenticity sells — to the tune of millions of dollars. Brands are taking notice and are working with older influencers or "granfluencers," as they are affectionately known in the industry.

The influencer economy

The creator economy is worth $250 billion today and could double in size to about $480 billion by 2027, according to a report from Goldman Sachs.

"The Retirement House," a TikTok account with 5.1 million followers that features six seniors who are playing characters while creating curated content, ran an ad promoting skincare company CeraVe. Four friends from Palm Springs, known as the "The Old Gays" on TikTok, have 11 million followers and partnered with Hyundai. And Chobani worked with 74-year-old Lynn Davis, whose cooking videos have attracted 15.7 million TikTok followers, for an ad promoting the brand.

Most Americans on social media are between the ages of 18 and 29. But the number of people 65-plus on social media grows each year: In 2014, 21% of those in that age group were on social media, a figure that more than doubled to 45% by 2021, according to Pew Research.

"We think of older people in a certain way, and the more older people that put themselves out there authentically on social media, we can change what aging looks like and it can be more positive," Polise said.

At 78, artist and influencer Debra Rapaport is finding a new audience for her sustainable wearable art. On Instagram she promotes her upcoming shows, workshops, and work she's selling - to her nearly 60,000 Instagram followers.

"I'm not afraid at 78 to put myself out there and say, this is who I am, this is what I do. I've been doing it a very long time. I don't intend to stop," said Rapaport.

She says her over-the-top eclectic style catches the eye of her younger followers, inspiring them to take risks and express themselves.

"I think young people are craving authenticity. And that's what I try to encourage," she said.

It benefits the granfluencers, too. As Americans age, their world often gets smaller. But these older influencers have hundreds of thousands of followers to connect with when they need support.

For example, in June 2022, Polise was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She shared her journey with her followers — from nearly going blind, to chemotherapy sessions, to sharing the joyful news later that year that she had beaten cancer.

An organization that is working to counter hate and disinformation online is raising concerns about the type of videos young people may be seeing on TikTok.

The Centers for Countering Digital Hate set out to test TikTok's algorithm after hearing concerns from parents about what their children are seeing on the platform. The nonprofit organization says it set up eight new accounts in the U.S., U.K, Canada and Australia, and listed the user as 13 years old, the youngest allowed by TikTok.

For the experiment, the accounts briefly watched and liked videos about body image and mental health.

"Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within 8 minutes, TikTok served content related to eating disorders. Every 39 seconds, TikTok recommended videos about body image and mental health to teens," the organization claims.

The Centers for Countering Digital Hate says some of the videos disclosed information about teens expressing the desire to attempt suicide. Other self-harm videos featured razor blades.

In a statement about the report, a spokesperson said the experiment does not reflect how regular people use the platform.

"This activity and resulting experience does not reflect genuine behavior or viewing experiences of real people," the spokesperson said. "We regularly consult with health experts, remove violations of our policies, and provide access to supportive resources for anyone in need. We're mindful that triggering content is unique to each individual and remain focused on fostering a safe and comfortable space for everyone, including people who choose to share their recovery journeys or educate others on these important topics."

TikTok's Community Guidelines state that it does not allow content "depicting, promoting, normalizing, or glorifying activities that could lead to suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating." It vowed to remove content cited in the report that violated its Community Guidelines.

While TikTok acknowledges it will not catch every piece of content that violates its guidelines, it says it has a team of more than 40,000 safety professionals who are responsible for helping keep the platform safe.

TikTok says from April to June of this year, more than 90% of content that violated policies for suicide and self-harm was removed before there was a single view.

Still, the Centers for Countering Digital Hate believes more should be done to protect teens from dangerous content. It created a guide for parents to help them understand the potential problems on TikTok. It's also pushing policymakers to force social media companies to be more transparent about their algorithms and economic incentives. In addition, the organization believes companies should be held accountable when they fail to enforce policies that are aimed at stopping harm.

TikTok launched what it calls an industry-leading Transparency Center two years ago. The company says it regularly publishes transparency reports to hold itself accountable.

Jennifer Seeley was glued to her phone, safe at home but terrified nonetheless.

There was an active shooter at the Texas mall where she works as an assistant store manager. And she was searching desperately for information, praying. Was the gunman dead? Were her coworkers dead? What was happening?

So with law enforcement in the Dallas area town of Allen releasing information slowly on that horrible May 6 afternoon, she turned to social media for answers, stumbling across videos showing the bodies of some of the eight who were slain. Desperately she texted her coworkers.

“That’s where all of my information came from was what I saw on Twitter. And, you know, nobody was really releasing any information on what actually happened,” she says now, nearly two weeks later.

The shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets this month has law enforcement public information officers from around the country talking. Social media, they say, has accelerated everything. Now everyone can post images from their phone. That means if police don’t talk, reporters and the public will simply go online, as happened in Allen.

And that presents a major problem, says Katie Nelson, social media and public relations coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department in northern California. Nelson teaches about crisis management and social media best practices. And these days, she says, when it comes to responding, “The luxury of time does not exist."

POLICE APPROACHES HAVE EVOLVED

Police began to harness social media a decade ago, most famously after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The four-day manhunt ended with police tweeting: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”

It was groundbreaking at the time, says Yael Bar Tur, a police communication consultant and former director of social media for the New York City police department. Now, she says, that it is the basic level expected of law enforcement.

“It’s not enough just to be on social media, you have to be good at it,” she says. “At the end of the day, you know, we have to use this tool because if you don’t, it is going to be used against you.”

In Allen, the mall shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. Allen police sent their first tweet around 4:20 p.m., announcing simply that police were at the mall and that an active investigation was underway. Seeley continued to fear that her coworkers at the Crocs store were hiding and the gunman was still on the loose.

At nearly 7 p.m., police in Allen said an officer had “neutralized the threat.” That meant he was dead. But the often-used term can be confusing to the public, says Julie Parker, a former broadcast journalist and law enforcement public information officer who now advises government agencies on how to respond to critical incidents.

“Normal people who don’t work in law enforcement don’t know what the word neutralized means,” Parker says.

Adding to the situation, the initial news conferences were brief and infrequent. One lasted less than two minutes, and police took no questions.

Eventually she learned that her coworkers had survived, but a security guard she knew was among the dead. Twenty-year-old Christian LaCour had helped jump start a customer’s car just a few days earlier.

“Very anxiety-inducing,” Seeley said of the whole experience.

MAKING THE BEST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

How to harness social media in the best ways — and quickly — was on everyone’s mind last week as public information officers gathered at a midyear conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“You had a little more time to get information out five or six years ago. The expectation wasn’t there that it would be immediate, and I think it is now,” says Sarah Boyd, who is on the executive board of the association’s group on public communication.

She says her colleagues often text each other to discuss how communications are handled after tragedies. The responsibility weighs on her; she is well aware that the messages police tweet in the midst of a mass shooting might be read by someone hiding from the shooter.

“All they’ve got is their phone, and that tweet is their lifeline," says Boyd, a former newspaper reporter. She is now the public relations manager at the Clay County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office in the Kansas City area.

This newest crop of public information officers, who like Boyd are much more likely to be former reporters themselves than in the past, also are demanding to have a seat at the table when officers are planning how to respond to mass casualty events and police shootings.

They note that the flow of information can go both ways, generating tips from the public, who might have cell phone or Ring doorbell video that could help investigators.

It can be challenging, though, with police nationally struggling to regain the public's trust in the wake of George Floyd's killing in 2020 and the protests that followed. Many factors — for example is the suspect still on the loose? — play a role in what can be released. And even if the suspect is killed, the investigation isn’t over; law enforcement still must determine whether the shooter acted alone, says Alex del Carmen, an associate dean of the school of criminology at Tarleton State University in Texas.

Missteps after the mass shooting at Uvalde, when law enforcement released shifting and at times contradictory information, show the importance of getting details right.

“People were just scratching their heads on the second or third day,” del Carmen says. He has sympathy, though, for the officers faced with communicating the unimaginable; entire careers can be defined by moments like these.

A MODEL FOR QUICKER INFORMATION

The bulk of the nation’s police forces are small, and there are vast differences in what each state allows them to release. In Missouri, for instance, 911 recordings are inaccessible to the public.

The public itself has no such restrictions, though.

After a man killed 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March 2021, an independent, part-time journalist began livestreaming on his YouTube channel before officers even arrived. The effect can be instantaneous — and, for authorities, quite dizzying.

“We’re putting out information quicker than I’ve ever seen before,” says Boulder police public information officer Dionne Waugh. Given the speed of social media, she says, there's simply no choice.

Amid a crush of media, each victim's family was assigned its own public information officer. All the while, what had happened was hitting Waugh personally; the victims included police Officer Eric Talley, a friend who died rushing into the store.

Though she described the experience as “life-changing” and “horrible,” she has led trainings in the years that have followed. She hopes that reliving it will help others.

Sadly, it wasn't long after Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron asked her to speak that he faced his own mass shooting. In March, a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in his city before being gunned down by police.

The police tweets were fast. The very first one announced that the shooter was dead. Surveillance video was released before the 10 p.m. nightly newscast. Body camera footage came out the following morning, in line with the department's policy of releasing such video quickly. The stream of information was fast, continual and generally accurate.

“As we have made decisions about releasing body cam in police-shooting situations, I have said to some of my colleagues across the country, especially when this first started, that I was flying a jet trying not to crash it,” says Aaron, a 32-year police veteran. “And so far, it hasn’t crashed.”

When it comes to healthy eating, there's more negative influence coming from social media than one may think.

A study published in the JAMA Network Open journal looked at some of the most followed accounts on Instagram and found an overwhelming number of their posts about food and drinks would be considered unhealthy by nutritional standards other countries have for advertising guidelines.

"If they post a single food post, or a single beverage post, this hits the news feeds of more people than the amount of people who are going to watch the Super Bowl a month from now," said Bradley Turnwald, one of the researchers for the study.

Turnwald studies factors that make people engage in healthy behaviors and what undermines their motivation.

"This can really contribute to a followers' perception of what is common, what is valued in society right now," Turnwald said.

The research also found half of all the drink posts were for alcoholic beverages. Past research has shown that the more exposure a young person has to alcohol, the more likely they are to drink.

But celebrity content isn't all to blame. When a celebrity posted something considered "unhealthy," the study found that they got more likes and comments than healthy food and drink posts, which incentivizes similar posts.

Turnwald also believes researchers would likely find similar trends in unhealthy food and drink posts among regular social media users.

"When a celebrity post something, and it can hit tens or hundreds of millions of feeds at once because they're looked up to as these role models and trendsetters in society," Turnwald said. "But if they would take those actions and post healthier foods and beverages, it could start to shift that norm of what followers are seeing and liking and commenting on, and I think that can have a really positive effect for public health."

In a TikTok video with more than 30 million views and 7 million likes, a chipmunk is paying for groceries at the cashier.

The rabbit cashier asks, "Paper or plastic?"

The chipmunk ominously replies — and repeats, at the rabbit's confusion, "Mouth."

In the next frame, the groceries (a pile of nuts) and the rabbit's hand are engulfed by the chipmunk in one mouthful.

This points audiences to the punchline, and an animal fact — chipmunks' cheeks can expand to a size three times larger than their heads.

By animating the chipmunk's elastic cheeks (and morbid tendencies), the creators with Natural Habitat Shorts say they're experimenting with "animals in human situations" — allowing the creatures to turn the tables for entertainment and drop some knowledge in the process.

"To animals, everything they do is very mundane. It's just survival to them," said Nicole Low, one of the creators behind the account. "This is how we must look to them filming their lives."

The brains behind the videos — college classmates-turned-roommates Low, Brennan Brinkley and Tyler Kula — saw TikTok as an opportunity to reimagine nature documentaries from the perspectives of animals. Their videos feature bats drinking coffee upside down at a cafe (and spilling the scalding drink on other customers) and crows dressing up as scarecrows for Halloween, using Cartoon-Network-style animations and voiceovers.

Like most animal videos on the internet, there's an audience for that. Since starting in August, the account has amassed over a million followers and nearly 20 million likes.

Less than a minute long each and averaging well over millions of views, videos from creators like Natural Habitat Shorts aren't going viral just for laughs. The TikToks are based on science and history — subjects that elementary school teachers dream of making their students excited for.

The concepts explored by Natural Habitat Shorts are all anchored around a fun fact about the animals. But nature — and its absurdity — lends itself to humor, which can help make complex concepts easier to understand, Brinkley said.

"There's so much irony in comedy," Brinkley said. "Finding the irony in the interesting things about these animals is really important."

The science of humor

There's a humor to science, and a science to humor.

Science and history as comedic entertainment isn't a new phenomenon. Comedy Central's "Drunk History," which featured historical reenactments based on inebriated narration, tackled topics like former U.S. presidents and famous inventions for six seasons.

Researchers like Stephen Hupp, a psychology professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, have studied the use of humor in engaging students and found that consistently entertaining students with humorous facts or visuals can help them retain information.

TikTok videos, while not nearly as extensive as the content covered in a full class period, can help pique interest in topics of natural history, Hupp said.

"It's a good tool to get engagement," Hupp said.

TikTok creator Adrian Bliss said he's always enjoyed museums and history. He converged his affinity for these subjects with his deadpan humor, garnering more than 3.5 million followers over the past year. His sketches are live-action reenactments, inspired by funny, strange scenarios that he said pop into his head — like an audience of crickets at a comedy show, or a dinosaur trying to sneak onto Noah's Ark.

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Bliss said the all-knowing algorithms of TikTok have helped him reach niche "corners" of the platform. His video on Henry the VIII found its way to "Tudor-Tok," as fans of the House of the Tudor informed him.

"It has to be entertaining and funny — that's the most important thing," Bliss said. "If it ends up being educational or inspires anyone to take interest in certain subjects, that's the perfect thing to make."

Bliss didn't expect the popularity — or for educators and scientists to reach out in the way they have. Bliss said he's seen comments from teachers saying they showed the videos to their class. Brinkley said a bat sanctuary reached out after seeing Natural Habitat Shorts' videos on bats.

"A teacher thinks your comment is interesting enough to be shown in their class," Bliss said. "It's quite cool ... a really nice feeling."

Christine Greenhow, an associate professor of educational psychology and technology at Michigan State University, researches the use of social media in the classroom. She said engaging students with funny videos can be "very powerful."

"Educators would benefit from greater understanding of how students are using social media for learning purposes outside of school and building on those practices within classrooms," Greenhow said.

Putting joke to fact

Bliss has a wardrobe of costumes for nearly every historical occasion. He's been Noah and all the animals on the ark in the same TikTok sketch. He's played both Romeo and Juliet, a cast of biblical figures and a Mona Lisa painting. (Yes, there's a costume for her.)

All the one-man show needs is a green screen, costume, tripod and a fact -- which he gets from places like the Natural History Museum in London and National Geographic articles. Sometimes his account's bio, "Down with the fourth wall" (which alludes to his characters making eye contact with the camera and breaking that invisible barrier between actor and audience), applies a little too well in real life.

"It's a strange — very strange — experience filming stuff on your own in a costume," Bliss said. "It's only bad when the doorbell goes, and you're dressed as a bumblebee or an egg."

Natural Habitat Shorts is also a lean operation. The trio met studying film at Florida State University, and they cite memories of the children's television show "Zoboomafoo" and educational videos from the Crash Course YouTube channel as inspirations. (Hank Green, one of the brothers behind Crash Course, now follows the Natural Habitat Shorts account.)

The three of them handle everything, including storyboards, animations, voiceovers and editing.

"Anyone can do it," Brinkley said. "You just need people around you that you trust their sense of humor."

TikTok, with its infinite feed and loops of videos under three minutes, is a platform for concise content and instant punchlines — Bliss and Natural Habitat Shorts' videos have never surpassed one minute. Brinkley said the limited timeframe is just long enough to introduce an idea and deliver a punchline.

Bliss said the intent for his videos was never to supplant a lecture or even be used in a classroom. But he hopes he can pique interest in topics he thinks are amusing.

"If you can access an interesting fact ... in a humorous way, I think it just makes it much more accessible," Bliss said. "You can't necessarily teach everything about the subject, of course, but it's a good entry point."

Bliss and Natural Habitat Shorts both said the key to their videos is to make content they find intriguing and entertaining. As the old saying goes — where there's a fact, there's a gag.

"I can't see us ever running out," Kula said. "There's too many animals."

Experts say disturbing videos surrounding the recent deaths of two men will take a psychological toll on many in the black community.

The images of the moments leading up to the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery have spread widely.

A psychology professor we spoke to says seeing those videos is comparable in a lot of ways to trauma.

“What concerns me most about it is people don't realize the impact of that and being exposed to it,” said Dr. Rheeda Walker, a professor of psychology at the University of Houston and the author of the recently released book,

“The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health.”

Echoing these concerns, Rwenshaun Miller says the distribution of these videos is piling on during an already stressful time. Miller is the founder of a nonprofit aimed at increasing awareness for black mental health, called

Eustress, Inc.

“Especially during the time of a pandemic, you would think that you know one of the main concerns would be us addressing the issues when it comes to the virus, but now we also still have to deal with the weight of being black in America,” said Miller.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness notes that African Americans are 10% more likely to be impacted by psychological stress. However, only about 30% of black Americans with a mental illness will get treatment each year.

Both Miller and Walker suggest writing as a form of coping. Miller says it's good to have someone you can trust to talk it out with. Walker even takes it a step further, saying you could join or contribute to advocacy groups to channel your emotions into positive efforts toward change. Both strongly suggest taking breaks from social media or the news.

“Watch what you consume. It's one thing for us to be aware of what's going on, but then it's another thing to be obsessed with it,” said Miller.

“We want to be informed, that's important. We want to know what's going on, but maybe take it in smaller doses or maybe turning things on later in the day rather than starting the day with this exposure,” said Walker.

Walker says it's important to pay attention to your feelings. Don't just ignore them. And even if you're a bit overwhelmed, it's okay to step back.

DRY RIDGE, Ky. — Kentucky State Police are warning of a new round of scam calls that use "aggressive" tactics to convince victims to turn over personal information and money.

Police said the scam works by convincing people to buy items over social media.

"The solicitor typically targets elderly people by showcasing items well below market value, and later requests payment by gift cards. This is a scam! If it sounds too good to be true, it often is," police said in a release Friday.

Kentucky State Police recommends treating every solicitation call or encounter as a scam until proven otherwise. To do this, research the actual market value of items being sold online, and do not try to purchase one unless you are doing it in-person or through a "credible, secured online payment platform."

Not sure if it's a scam? KSP offers some "warning signs" to look out for, including:

• High pressure sales or frequent calls.
• Pressuring you into an immediate decision ("act now" offers).
• Requesting credit or debit card or any banking information.
• Offering to send someone to your home or to overnight something.
• Offering something for free.
• Not responding to questions or cutting you off.
• Hawking a "no-risk" investment.
• Refusing to provide written information or references (that includes hanging up when you ask for written information or other forms of authenticity).
• Requesting payment in form of gift cards.
• Imitating law enforcement to request payment for citations, bail money, etc.

KSP recommends not engaging with scammers. Instead, report them to local law enforcement.

SPRINGBORO, Ohio —

The Springboro Police Department said in a Facebook post Thursday that they are aware 0f a group in southwest Ohio responsible for recent vehicle thefts.

The Springboro Police Department is actively investigating the incidents in partnership with other Ohio agencies, and has already apprehended several people involved with the group.

The department posted on Facebook after a civilian social media post began to circulate about the thefts made from garages that are left open.

Police say that there are no instances in the greater Springboro area where a perpetrator has entered a home, aside from the garage.

The Springboro Police Department encourages residents to secure their cars at night and to keep doors and windows locked. The department also asks that people call the station directly if they have any concerns instead of speculating information on social media.

If you experience any suspicious activity in your neighborhood please contact your local police department to investigate.

A massive global outage plunged Facebook, its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms and many people who rely heavily on these services — including Facebook's own workforce — into chaos Monday.

The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. ET and was still unfixed more than six hours later, although scattered users have reported partial restoration of one service or another. Websites and apps often suffer outages of varying size and duration, but hours-long global disruptions are rare.

“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

For hours, Facebook's only public comment was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and that it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.”

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's outgoing chief technology officer, later tweeted “sincere apologies" to everyone impacted by the outage. He blamed “networking issues” and said teams are "working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible."

There was no evidence as of Monday afternoon that malicious activity was involved. Matthew Prince, CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, tweeted that “nothing we’re seeing related to the Facebook services outage suggests it was an attack.” Prince said the most likely explanation was that Facebook mistakenly knocked itself off the internet during maintenance.

Facebook did not respond to messages for comment about the attack or the possibility of malicious activity.

While much of Facebook's workforce is still working remotely, there were reports that employees at work on the company's Menlo Park, California, campus had trouble entering buildings because the outage had rendered their security badges useless.

But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebook's nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties — to run businesses, connect with online communities, log on to multiple other websites and even order food.

It also showed that despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can easily replace the social network that over the past 17 years has effectively evolved into critical infrastructure. The outage came the same day Facebook asked a federal judge that that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services.

There are certainly online services for posting selfies, connecting with fans or reaching out to elected officials, But those who rely on Facebook to run their business or communicate with friends and family in far-flung places saw this as little consolation.

Kendall Ross, owner of a knitwear brand called Knit That in Oklahoma City, said he has 32,000 followers on his Instagram business page @id.knit.that. Almost all of his website traffic comes directly from Instagram. He posted a product photo about an hour before Instagram went out. He said he tends to sell about two hand-knit pieces after posting a product photo for about $300 to $400.

“The outage today is frustrating financially,” he said. “It’s also a huge awakening that social media controls so much of my success in business.”

The cause of the outage remains unclear. Madory said it appears Facebook appears to have deleted basic data that tells the rest of the internet how to communicate with its properties. Such data is part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its location on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as primary modes of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

“They don’t know how to contact the people in their lives without it,” she said. “They’re more susceptible to social engineering because they’re so desperate to communicate.” Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

Jake Williams, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out, chances were good that the outage is “an operational issue” caused by human error.

“What it boils down to: running a LARGE, even by Internet standards, distributed system is very hard, even for the very best,” tweeted Columbia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin.

Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company's awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. Haugen went public on CBS's “60 Minutes" program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook's own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls' mental health.

The Journal's stories, called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.”

Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the company’s main Twitter account, posting “hello literally everyone” as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform. Later, as an unverified screenshot suggesting that the facebook.com address was for sale circulated, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, “how much?”

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AP business writer Mae Anderson in New York and AP technology writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, R.I. contributed to this report.