People around the world are panicking after the video sharing website YouTube has crashed.

Videos are not playing on the website and are showing an error message for people to return later.

YouTube announced on Twitter they are aware of the issues and working to resolve them.

People have already taken to Twitter to share their dismay.

A live map shows YouTube outage hotspots across the United States, with the northeast hit particularly hard. Facebook also appears to be down for users in Australia and New Zealand.

According to Down Detector, the outage appears to have started around 2.16pm.