Why is my phone stuck in the shutting down phase?

[Android Central Question]

The apps on my Motorola 3g, specifically Instagram, Snapchat, and Google keyboard, kept crashing, so I held the power button down for a few seconds so that I could turn the phone off for a temporary fix. It's currently stuck on the "phone is shutting off. Please wait" screen, I can't close it and the phone won't turn off when normally this process would only take like 2 seconds and I've been waiting for a while. I'm currently waiting for the phone to die so that I can plug it in and it will hopefully turn back on but I'm afraid it won't. Is there any reason for this to have happened and can it be fixed?