Facebook and Instagram want you to log off

(Image credit: Chandan Khanna / Getty Images)

published 1 August 2018

Facebook and Instagram want to take up less of your time. Yes, really.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, the two platforms will soon debut a feature that clocks how long users spend on their apps, Recode reports. It's all part of Mark Zuckerberg's 2018 push to make sure time spent on Facebook and Instagram is "time well spent."

Users got a first look at the "time well spent" features when screenshots were leaked in June, per The Verge. "Your Activity" on Instagram and "Your Time on Facebook" display a graph of users' average time spent on the apps. Users can then set an alarm for when they've reached their daily average. To get even more disconnected, users can also mute Instagram and Facebook notifications for minutes or hours.

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The two platforms profit off the time users spend scrolling, making the new features pretty ironic. But Ameet Ranadive, Instagram's product director of well-being, said at a press event that this is a trade Facebook is willing to make. It's in line with Zuckerberg's "responsibility" mantra, which led to a revamped algorithm prioritizing friends' content over pages'. These newest developments will similarly give users "power and control over how and when they want to engage," Ranadive said, per BuzzFeed News.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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