Meta-owned photo and video sharing social networking service Instagram introduced ‘Your Activity’ feature in 2018, that tracks how much time users spend on the app. Now, Instagram is changing the ‘daily time limit’ options it had introduced with the feature.
Users were earlier able to select a time limit as low as 10 minutes per day on the app. The latest update brings that minimum to 30 minutes. The daily time limit options now available on Instagram are 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour, two hours, and three hours.
“This daily time limit setting pops up a notification to the user once their app activity hits their preferred limit, reminding them to be conscious of how much time they are spending on the app — and maybe making it easier for them to choose to quit out of the app voluntarily,” IANS reported.
Previously the company supported a user-defined limit for Instagram that could be as low as 15 minutes, or even 10 minutes, per day, when it was making a big PR push to suggest that more ‘mindful’ usage of its services was possible, as concern over social media addiction surged.
According to the report, it seems the attention-loving adtech giant now wants Instagram users to spend longer eyeballing content feeds on the platform where it can cash in by targeting them with ads.
The photo and video sharing social networking service on Tuesday confirmed the changes in the settings via Twitter. “We changed the ‘daily limit’ options to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time”, said the company. Instagram adds that the new feature ‘Take A Break’ shows full-screen reminders to leave the app and includes 10-minute intervals.
