Over the past few years, Instagram and Facebook have come up with ways to see how much time you spend use apps every day as well as an option to set a daily usage time limit. Now, it looks like Instagram has increased the minimum daily time limit setting to 30 minutes, up from 10 or 15 minutes.
One Instagram user told TechCrunch that the app asked them to “set a new value” for their daily time limit, although note that they can keep their existing settings. “Available values for the daily time limit will change as part of an app update,” a pop-up reads. The Instagram app now gives me a minimum time limit of 30 minutes. Engadget asked Meta to clarify when and why it made the change.
Settings in the Facebook app are more detailed. Users can choose any time limit in five-minute increments. When the user reaches their chosen time limit in either app, a notification pops up to let them know, although they can ignore it.
At the time of the feature’s rollout, Meta said the idea was to give people more control over the time they spend in its apps and to “drive conversations between parents and teens” about healthy online habits. In November, Instagram starts test the feature “Take a break” to remind users, especially teenagers, to put down their phones often.
It’s not clear why Instagram seems to have increased the minimum daily time limit. Still, the timing is quite interesting as Facebook’s daily active users fell for the first time last quarter while user growth across Meta’s entire family of apps (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) almost unchanged.
Meta expects slower revenue growth this year due to more competition for people’s time and more user attention to features that generate less revenue, such as Stories. Increasing time limits, and keeping users scrolling through Instagram and watching ads longer, could be one way to balance revenue concerns.
It remains to be seen what politicians can make this move. In October, Senator Richard Blumenthal speak Meta (then still known as Facebook) “knew its products could be addictive and toxic to children.” Earlier this month, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate for the purpose of asking the Federal Trade Commission to study ways to reduce “the harmful effects of algorithmic amplification and social media addiction on covered platforms.”
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