Facebook has been forced to turn off its servers after being hit by a wave of photographs of ugly children wearing their new school uniforms.

With millions proud parents rushing to show off their beloved as they send them off to school, the sheer amount of incoming data was too much for Facebook to handle.

“At Facebook we pride ourselves on remaining online whenever possible but this problem was too big. We had to shut down our servers as they were overheating. Allowing them to stay running would have cause irreparable damage,” Mark Zuckerberg said, with a dead-eyed smile.

Parents may be angry that they cannot show off their tiny tots wearing cheap, miniature suits, yet for parent-less adults it has come as something of a relief.

“I can cope with Facebook being down for a few days and if it means I don’t have to see one more [censored]ing photograph of some awkward looking kid dressed in clothes two sizes too big for them, all the better,” man on the street, Rick Yewing, told us.

Trisha Martin, a mother and regular Facebook user, was less than pleased about the news. She said, “All I wanted was a digital record of my boy’s first day of school. If you don’t want to see if then you can either unfriend or unfollow me. Get off your strange little high horse!”

Facebook has said they plan to switch their servers back on today and that new servers will be brought in for next year’s deluge.