New tools for managing time spent on Instagram and Facebook

Anyone who has ever tried to cut down the time they spend on social media knows that having apps like Instagram and Facebook on your phone can make it very difficult to resist checking notifications and feeds.

Over the coming weeks, both Facebook and Instagram aim to make that easier by introducing new tools to help you manage your time on the app, which they say will give users more control over the time spent on their social media. 

Facebook has said that the release of these new tools comes after “collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organisations, academics, our own extensive research and feedback from our community.”

Facebook and Instagram’s new time management tools

As soon as these tools have been rolled out, you will be able to access the time management tools from the settings in the app.

On Instagram tap ‘Your Activity’, and on Facebook, tap ‘Your Time on Facebook’.

You will be brought to a dashboard where you can view your usage and manage your time.

Average time spent on app

The dashboard will show you what your average time spent on the app is, and you will also be able to look at certain days in more detail to see how long you were using the app for.

This could help to show patterns in your use and times that you might need to work on in cutting down your usage.

Reminders to stop using the app

You will also have the option to set the amount of time you want to spend on the app each day, and receive an alert whenever you have reached your set amount of time for the day.

You can cancel or change the reminder any time.

Mute notifications

If you find it hard to resist an unread notification, then you can also use the mute push notifications setting. You can set the amount of time you want to mute notifications for so you can avoid getting distracted.

Why Facebook have introduced these tools

Facebook have said that these tools are a step towards taking responsibility for how time spent on their platforms can impact on people. Although these tools could ultimately mean less time spent on Instagram and Facebook, their goal is improve the quality of the time you do spend online.

Learn more about these tools and other new features here.