Facebook has announced tools to enable both Facebook and Instagram users to better manage the time they spend using those apps. That will include an activity dashboard, a daily reminder and enhanced ways to limit notifications.
In a post, Ameet Ranadive, Product Management Director at Instagram, and David Ginsberg, Director of Research at Facebook said “We have a responsibility to help people understand how much time they spend on our platforms so they can better manage their experience.” They added, “t’s not just about the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram but how they spend that time. It’s our responsibility to talk openly about how time online impacts people — and we take that responsibility seriously.”
How to access controls:
These tools are being rolled soon and, once implemented, you can access the tools from the setting page on either Instagram or Facebook:
- On Instagram. tap our Activity,” and on Facebook, tap “Your Time on Facebook.”
- At the top, you’ll see a dashboard showing your average time for that app on that device.
- Tap any bar to see your total time for that day.
- Below the dashboard, you can set a daily reminder to give yourself an alert when you’ve reached the amount of time you want to spend on that app for that day.
- You can change or cancel the reminder at any time. You can also tap on “Notification Settings” to quickly access the new “Mute Push Notifications” setting. This will limit your Facebook or Instagram notifications for a period of time when you need to focus.
