In a move that could impact the time users spend on the social media site, social media tech giant Instagram quietly removed the ability for users to limit their daily use of the app to 30 minutes. This comes after the company previously supported Instagram’s custom limits, which could be as low as 15 minutes or even 10 minutes per day. According to a Tech Crunch report, the social media tech giant “made a major PR push to show that its services can be used more ‘cautiously’ as concerns about social media addiction grow”.
According to Mac Rumors, after a recent app update, the “Set Daily Limit” menu card appears and prompts the user to choose how long it should be, with the new minimum being 30 minutes and the radio button next to it being up to 3 hours is pre-selected on the menu card, as if to encourage the user to select that limit.
In 2018, Instagram introduced an in-app option to set a daily time limit and send reminders when that time limit is reached – useful for those who want to limit their social media usage. Users can choose a time limit of ten or even five minutes per day, but choosing such a short time is no longer possible. While the popup indicates that the user can keep the existing limit if desired, an additional popup on the application activity page indicates that the 10 minute value is “no longer supported”. So, after the update, users will find that the new available limits are now 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours.
The change comes a few months after Instagram launched its Take a Break feature, which gives users the option to receive periodic reminders if they use the app for extended periods of time. The change follows Meta’s disappointing quarterly results reported earlier this month, when the company cut its first-quarter 2022 forecast by $30 billion.
The Mac Rumors report further found that Meta attributes the performance drop in part to Apple’s steps to improve user privacy, making it harder for platforms and apps to track users through other apps and websites for advertising purposes, for which Meta’s deals would pay The price is $10 billion this year.
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