Instagram Wants You To Stay In Its Social World Just A Little Bit More

screenrant.com:

Instagram has quietly raised the time limit in its activity tab that allows the app to send a notification after users have spent a fixed amount of time engrossed in its social media world daily. The idea is to keep digital addiction at bay and promote a healthy online experience. Or, in the words of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, «time well spent» on social media platforms like Facebook. Zuckerberg promoted the idea in a lengthy blog post back in 2018.

And ever since, both Instagram and Facebook have added features that aim to limit the daily screen time and nudge users to take a break. The idea seems counterintuitive to each app's fundamental business model, both of which rely on engagement to serve ads and make millions of dollars each year. In fact, leaked internal research from a whistleblower revealed that Facebook knew about its users' compulsive social media usage pattern that bordered on the edge of addiction. Independent studies have also come with similar findings on Instagram.

Related: Facebook Research Says It's Both Healthy & Harmful For Loneliness

However, it appears that Instagram is backtracking on its commitment towards a healthy social media interaction. The app's Set Daily Time Limit feature has so far allowed users to set a daily time limit of as low as 10 minutes and up to three hours. Once that limit is breached, the app sends a notification to alert users. First spotted by TechCrunch, Instagram has now raised the minimum daily usage limit to 30 minutes, while the ceiling remains the same. Instagram later confirmed that it had changed the daily time limit figures, claiming that it was done to avoid sending multiple notifications. However, the official Instagram Comms handle on Twitter went on a