The social networking giant, also the owner of Instagram, Facebook has on Wednesday unveiled tools aimed at helping their users to deal with being addicted to the apps.
The new features will let users manage their time on the apps by providing a dashboard that tells you how much time you’ve spent on Facebook or Instagram on a given day.
They have also developed a tool that will let users set daily limits and once one hits the set time, the tool makes an alert.
However, there is an alternative to mute push notifications for anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours at a time. The company wants users only to spend intentional time on the apps, according to Ameet Ranadive, product management director at Instagram.
“We want the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram to be intentional, positive and inspiring,” Ranadive said as quoted in Sky News.
David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook, said in a statement that “our hope is that these tools give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.”
The development comes at a time when tech addiction has become a serious issue. Reports indicate that people check their phones an average of 47 times a day.
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In addition to trying to fight fake news and abuse on Facebook, the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg has preached a mantra of “time well spent” on the social network, instead of focusing on the overall amount of time people spend on the service.
Earlier this year, the company overhauled the news feed to prioritize posts from family and friends over viral videos and news.
The announcement by Facebook follows a similar move by Google to introduce features into Android P that will help people limit the amount of time they spend on their devices.
Apple has also announced tools to limit push notifications and stop certain notifications from appearing at certain times of the day. Here in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni has lashed out to social media users accusing them of chatting endlessly and spreading malice on the platforms.
Mr. Museveni has campaigned against using the internet to access social media for chatting, terming it as a luxury.
” As I said in my earlier message, it is, moreover, a luxury that is costly to the country’s economy apart from the shillings the users keep spending to use the internet to access the social media (Facebook),” he wrote on social media recently.
Access
To access the tools, go to the settings page on either app. On Instagram, tap “Your 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 Instagram or Facebook notifications for a period of time when you need to focus.
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