For the last couple years, Instagram and Facebook have offered ways to see how long you spend using the apps each day as well as an option to set a daily usage time limit. Now, it seems Instagram has increased the minimum daily time limit setting to 30 minutes, up from 10 or 15 minutes.
This daily time limit setting pops up a notification to the user once their app activity hits their preferred limit, reminding them to be conscious of how much time they are spending on the app — and maybe making it easier for them to choose to quit out of the app voluntarily.
Previously the company supported a user-defined limit for Instagram that could be as low as 15 minutes — or even 10 minutes — per day, when it was making a big PR push to suggest that more ‘mindful’ usage of its services was possible, as concern over social media addiction surged.
It’s unclear why Instagram seems to have increased the minimum daily time limit. However, the timing is interesting given Facebook daily active users dropped for the first time last quarter while user growth across Meta’s family of apps (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) remained almost flat.
Meta expects slower revenue growth this year due to more competition for people’s time and users paying more attention to features that generate less revenue, such as Reels. Upping the time limit, and keeping users scrolling through Instagram and viewing ads for longer, could be one way of counterbalancing those revenue concerns.
