You’d remember, that last year, Instagram started testing a new ‘Take a break’ feature, which sends reminders to users to take a break from using the app after some time – that can be 10, 20, 30 minutes, or the like. A few months later, Meta reported its Q4 2021 financials, which were shocking, to say the least.
Facebook saw its first-ever decline in Daily Active Users (DAUs) and Meta’s share fell by 20% as more users were engaged in other social media platforms. Additionally, the user growth across Meta’s family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) remained almost flat. This is certainly not good news for the company, which had focused on rebranding and the metaverse as it reeled under the accusations of controversial safety policies.
Going forward, Meta expects slower revenue growth in 2022, largely due to more competition from other social media platforms.
Now, the new Take a Break feature (and the older option to set daily limits) is not to blame for this, but evidently, Instagram is a little wary and has taken steps. It has shaved off some app time limit options and increased the minimum daily time limit from as low as 10-15 minutes to 30 minutes. The upper limit is now set at three hours.
While you would earlier receive reminders that you are spending too much time on the app after 10-15 minutes had passed, now, you will not receive reminders until your app activity for the day has hit at least 30 minutes.
According to Meta, the removal of the “daily limit” limits that were shorter than 30 minutes was related to the launch of the Take a Break feature. “We have two time management features. Our existing ‘daily limit’ shows you a notification when you’ve hit your daily limit, but our newest feature ‘Take A Break’ shows you full-screen reminders to leave the app and includes 10-minute intervals. We changed the ‘daily limit’ options to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time,” it said.
If you are an Instagram user with a 10-minute daily limit, you will have received reminders to change the setting for the past couple of weeks. While the new popup said that you can keep the existing limit, you need to select a preset option (if you click on the edit button) with a minimum limit of 30 minutes. Another popup shows that the 10-minute value is no longer supported.
The new limits are – 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours, changing as part of a new app update. With an increased minimum daily time limit, Instagram hopes that users would engage on its platform (and therefore be bombarded with ads) for a longer period.
