Facebook has announced on its COVID Newsroom post, its latest feature- Quiet Mode, which allows users to mute the app’s push notifications for set intervals of time. The company describes this new feature as a means to “setting boundaries for how you spend your time” and as a tool to “help you find the right balance for how you use Facebook.”
Under this new feature, users will be able to browse charts that show them their time spent on Facebook on a daily basis, a comparison of usage at different times of the day(like daytime versus nighttime usage), and another chart that lets users see how many times they opened the Facebook app each day.
Changing the ‘time spent’ charts that were introduced to the platform in 2018 and incorporating them in the new ‘Quiet Mode’ feature, this section will include an option to enable a weekly report that will let you know how you’re managing your time.
With this new feature, Facebook is striving to bring transparency to the platform by bringing out features that were previously hidden in a hoard of menus. With this section, will come the ‘Activity Log’ of all the things you have done on Facebook, including likes, comments and shares. Moreover, the platform will bring the ‘News Feed Preferences’ and ‘Notification Settings’ to the forefront, to enable users to make smarter decisions about their time on Facebook.
These features, which were already present on the platform but were ignored due to being inaccessible by most people, will bring a personalized touch to everyone’s Facebook experience. ‘News Feed Preferences’ will enable users to select the order in which they want to receive feed updates, while the ‘Notification Settings’ will help users to get in control of what push notifications they want to receive.
Interesting to know that famous Reverse Engineer Jane Manchun Wong found the feature back in March.
This is a part of Facebook’s ‘Digital well-being’ initiative, which wants to promote mental well-being of the customers in various social media platforms rather than the maximising the time spent scrolling, especially during lockdown periods. Along with the Quiet Mode feature, the company also emphasised on tips and resources to promote digital well-being, as advised by WHO.
Moreover, the company mentioned and urged users to tune into an instagram live series by Netflix called “Wanna Talk About It?” The company explained the series by saying,”Stars will pair up with experts from organizations like the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, NAMI, Crisis Text Line, The Trevor Project, Mental Health America and more to discuss how they’re coping during this time as well as ways to handle anxiety, stress and feelings of isolation while social distancing.”
