Is Mark Zuckerberg’s “time well spent” now over? Instagram appears to have quietly removed the option for mobile users to set a daily time restriction reminder of less than 30 min, which appears to match with Facebook/Meta claiming declining growth. Indeed, the app’s UX design encourages users to set a three-hour ‘limit’ (see screengrab below). This daily time restriction setting displays a message to the user when their app activity reaches their desired limit, reminding them to be mindful of how much time they are spending on the app — and maybe making it simpler for them to choose to stop the app freely.
Previously, the firm supported a user-defined restriction for Instagram that could be as low as 15 minutes — or even 10 minutes — every day, when it was making a large PR push to indicate that more mindful usage of its services was feasible, as public worry about social media addiction grew.
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However, it appears that the attention-seeking adtech behemoth now wants Instagram users to spend more time scrolling through content streams on the photo- and video-sharing site, where it can profit by targeting them with adverts. This might be a result of business pressure to squeeze outgrowth…
The Facebook app’s settings are more detailed. Users can set time limits in 5 min increments. When a user surpasses their time limit in either app, a notice appears, which they can ignore.
Meta stated at the time that the feature was introduced that the goal was to offer individuals greater control over how much time they spent on its applications and to “promote talks between parents and children” about safe internet use. Instagram began testing a “Take a Break” feature in November to urge users, particularly adolescents, to put down their phones now and again.
Meta did not respond to Engadget’s inquiries on when and why Instagram changed the daily time limit. It referred to a tweet stating that the Take a Break function might prompt users to exit the app as frequently as every 10 minutes.
In any event, it’s worth noting that Meta made the time restriction modification shortly after it was revealed that Facebook’s daily active users had declined for the first time in a quarter last quarter. The family of applications’ (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) user growth has stayed nearly unchanged.
Meta anticipates slower revenue growth this year as a result of more competition for people’s time and users focusing more on features that produce less income, such as Reels. Increasing the time limit and keeping users browsing around Instagram and viewing advertising for extended periods of time might be one method to address income problems.
It remains to be seen how lawmakers would react to the action. Sen. Richard Blumenthal stated in October that Meta (which was still known as Facebook at the time) “knows its products may be addicting and hazardous to children.” A bipartisan measure was filed in the Senate earlier this month with the goal of urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate methods to lessen “the impact of algorithmic boosting and social media addiction on protected platforms.”
