Instagram, back in 2018, had rolled out a ‘Your Activity’ feature on its platform that enabled users to set daily time limits on their usage of the app. It also allowed users to temporarily mute push notifications. Now, nearly three years later, Instagram has quietly increased the minimum daily time limit for its Your Activity feature.
First spotted by TechCrunch, Instagram is sending pop-ups to its users prompting them to update their daily limit value in accordance with an app update. The popup says that users can keep their existing limit if they want. But clicking the edit button directs them to select a preset option, wherein the lowest value is 30 minutes as against the lower value of 10 minutes that was available earlier. In addition to that Instagram is showing a second popup to the users on the activity page which says the 10-minute value is “no longer supported.”
As per a separate report by The Verge, the Instagram prompt now shows 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour, two hours and three hours as daily time limit options. Earlier, users could also set 10 minutes and 15 minutes as time limit options for restricting their daily access to the app.
Notably, when Instagram had first rolled out Your Activity controls for its users, tech companies across the globe were facing flak for their addictive nature and the effect that they were having on the well being of their users. In response to these concerns and more, Instagram had rolled out features that enabled users to consciously reduce their time spent in the app by setting a time limit as low as 10 minutes on the usage of the app.
Counterintuitive to that, Meta is now asking users to spend more time on Instagram. Interestingly, this development comes at a time when Facebook’s growth has fallen flat and its daily active user base declined for the first time since its launch – an event that wiped off 20% of Meta’s value. By raising the minimum daily limit, Instagram is now pushing users to spend more time on its platform with the hope of fixing some of those worrisome numbers in the last quarter.
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