With the recent surge in smartphone ownership, people are more than a little addicted to swiping and tapping screens. To help with smartphone addiction, Facebook and Instagram have introduced a new tool that will help people limit the time spent on the social networking apps.
Users can now set a daily reminder to give themselves an alert when they’ve reached the amount of time they want to spend on the app for the day.
The social network also introduced two additional tools: an activity dashboard and a new way to limit notifications.
The tools were said to be developed based on collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organizations, academics, Facebook’s extensive research, and feedback from its community.
In a post, Ameet Ranadive, Product Management Director at Instagram, and David Ginsberg, Director of Research at Facebook, said:
We want the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram to be intentional, positive and inspiring. Our hope is that these tools give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.
Hopefully, this does translate into less smartphone addiction.
