Early this August Facebook and Instragram announced the latest features, a tool that will help users to monitor the activity on the two social media and limit it if desired. The feature includes functions including activity dashboards, daily reminders, and new ways to limit notifications.
"We developed this tool based on inspiring collaboration from leading mental health experts and organizations, academics, our extension research and response from our communication," according to Ameet Ranadive, Director of Product Management on Instagram.
Together with the Research Director on Facebook, David Ginsberg, Ranadive in his statement on Facebook's official website revealed this feature was added because Facebook and Instagram wanted the time spent on the two social media to be intentional, positive, and inspiring.
"Our hope is that this tool gives people more control over the time they spend on our platform and also encourages conversations between parents and teenagers about online habits that are right for them," said Ginsberg and Ranadive in a joint statement.
To access this feature, users can open the settings page in the two applications. On Instagram tap on your Activities (Your Activity) and on Facebook tap tap Your Time on Facebook. At the top, the user will see a dashboard that shows the average time for the application on that device. Tap any bar to see the total user time for the day.
Under the dashboard, users can set daily reminders to warn when they have reached the amount of time they want to spend on the application for the day. Users can change or cancel reminders at any time. Users can also tap Notification Settings to quickly access the Mute Push Notifications settings.
"We have a responsibility to help people understand how much time they spend on our platform so they can better manage their experience. In December 2017, we shared insights on what the Facebook team did to create experiences that helped people connect and build relationships, "wrote Ginsberg and Ranadive.