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Both the website and mobile versions of each website went down from around 6:30am GMT until 7:15am - with users in Europe, the US and Asia all experiencing difficulties.
The Lizard Squad group, who previously launched a Christmas cyber attack on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live services, have already claimed responsibility for the attack, according to CBS Los Angeles.
Facebook released the following statement: “We’re aware that many people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”
As news of the online outage began to spread, furious social network users began to vent their anger and panic on Twitter and the hashtag #FacebookDown soon started trending.
Facebook is DOWN! I repeat FACEBOOK IS DOWN! #facebookdown :-)
— Martijn Holtes (@martijnholtes) January 27, 2015 One user tweeted: "Does this mean we have to go and talk to someone in real life?"
While another posted: "Facebook is DOWN! I repeat FACEBOOK IS DOWN!"
But their outraged tweets soon turned to joy after all of the services were swiftly restored.
One user tweeted: "Congratulations all! We survived #facebookdown. Twitter appreciated having you."
Another said: "Facebook is back. Now posting my panicked selfie during #facebookdown."
Facebook had 1.25 billion monthly active users at the end of September last year, while photo-sharing service Instagram has 300 million active monthly users uploading around 70 million photos per day.