“Starting today Instagram users will be able to better manage their time”
Instagram has started rolling out a new activity dashboard feature for helping users track their time on the app. Called ‘Your Activity’, the feature sits inside the hamburger icon on the upper right corner of your profile page and can be used to set daily time limits for using the app as well as for muting push notifications temporarily. The feature was announced by Facebook and Instagram back in August and it works similar to other digital wellbeing features like Apple’s Screen Time on iOS and Google’s Digital Wellness dashboard on Android 9.0. They are basically aimed at making users aware of the time they are spending on a particular app or a device and help them in managing it better.
Instagram’s dashboard will show you the time you have spent in each app over the past seven days. From there, you’ll be able to set a time limit for yourself during which you use the app. And once that time is reached, the app will send you gentle reminders regarding the same, although you’ll still be able to continue using the app. It’ll also allow you to mute notifications for up to 8 hours. This push for reducing the amount of screen time of users started in the past year or so, owing to cases of smartphone and social media addiction. Many tech giants also faced criticism over it for for how aggressively they court their users’ attention throughout the day.
Strangely, Instagram’s parent company Facebook is yet to roll out its ‘Your time on Facebook’ activity dashboard feature, which was announced in August.
