Facebook and Instagram have announced a new time limit tool to help users keep track of their usage habits in response to concerns over excessive social media use harming mental health.
Facebook, which also owns image and video sharing social network Instagram, said in an announcement that new features will allow account holders to monitor how much time they have spent on the app, set a daily time limit and mute notifications for a specified amount of time.
This announcement comes after statements from experts that social media when used excessively can negatively impact the mental health of the user. The NHS recently announced the ‘Scroll-Free September’ campaign to raise awareness of social media fuelling a mental health epidemic in young people and encourage them to stop using social media apps for 30 days.
Ameet Ranadive, product management director of Instagram and David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook said in a joint statement, “It’s our responsibility to talk openly about how time online impacts people and we take that responsibility seriously. These new tools are an important first step”.
The new features will be accessed from the settings page of both the Facebook and Instagram app. On Facebook, the new tools are under ‘Your time on Facebook’ and on Instagram, the tools can be found under ‘Your Activity’. Users can then see data on their usage habits, time spent on the application and are free to restrict their usage and notifications. Facebook has not yet provided a release date for the update containing these new features but posted on their blog that these new tools will be rolled out “soon”.
The announcement of the new update comes after a widely reported painful market loss for Facebook of an estimated $120 Billion as their stocks fell 20 per cent at the end of July.