Over the past two years, Instagram and Facebook have introduced ways to see how long you spend Using apps every day Plus an option to set a time limit for daily use. Now, it looks like Instagram has increased the minimum set daily time to 30 minutes, from 10 or 15 minutes.
Instagram user . said Take Crunch That the app asked them to “set a new value” for the daily time limit, despite noting that they can keep their current settings. “Available values for daily time limits change as part of an app update,” a pop-up read. Instagram currently offers me a time limit of at least 30 minutes. Engadget asked Meta for clarification on when and why the change was made.
The settings in the Facebook app are more precise. Users can choose any time limit in five minute increments. When the user reaches the time limit of their choice in either app, a notification pops up telling them, although they can ignore it.
At the time the feature was rolled out, Meta said the idea was to give people more control over the length of time they spend in its apps and “promote conversations between parents and teens” about healthy online habits. In November, Instagram started Test the “Take a Break” feature To remind users, especially teens, to turn off their phones every now and then.
It’s unclear why Instagram has increased the minimum daily time. However, the timing is interesting given that the number of daily active users on Facebook declined for the first time in the last quarter while user growth across the Meta suite of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) has remained roughly flat.
Meta expects slower revenue growth this year due to more competition for people’s time and users paying more attention to features that generate less revenue, such as Reels. Exceeding the time limit, and keeping users browsing Instagram and watching ads for longer, may be one way to offset these revenue concerns.
It remains to be seen what politicians can do with this move. In October, Senator Richard Blumenthal He said Meta (still called Facebook at the time) “knew their products could be addictive and toxic to children.” Earlier this month, the bill was bipartisan Presented in the Senate With the aim of asking the Federal Trade Commission to study ways to reduce the “harm of computational amplification and social media addiction to covered platforms.”
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