cant start a chat on facebook messenger

Hi I’ve just got a new iPad the 9th generation I’ve loaded Facebook messenger and Facebook it has all my chats on there like my phone but I was browsing Facebook and wanted to message someone and I clicked on the message and it just loaded messenger but not the person I wanted to message it was blank the left hand side was all the previously messages but the chat part was blank any ideas I don’t have this problem on my iPhone 11 is it an iPad thing and when I searched on fb help it says not available on iPad surely iPad aren’t in the dark ages 😂 I had an iPad before and I dunno if this was a problem I can’t remember I can still message people in messenger and people can message me but I can’t start a new chat if I click message on Facebook

thanks

jess