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Will Instagram and Facebook’s new feature change our scrolling habits?

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A young woman checks her social media feeds on her phone
A young woman checks her social media feeds on her phone

We spend a lot of time with our technological devices. 

So much so that folk behind Facebook and Instagram are now rolling out a new feature that is not only set out to show how much time you’ve spent on these apps, but will also give you an opportunity to set limits on the amount of time that you want to spend.

According to Refinery29, if you head to your Instagram profile and click on settings, you’ll be able to select the activity option which will show you a graph that tracks your time spent per week, although it delves down even further by showing you the amount you spend per day as well.

READ MORE: The silliest and most dangerous challenges people have done on social media

What this new feature also does is give you the option of setting up an amount of time you spend on Instagram or Facebook and when that time is up, you’ll get a reminder that it’s time to log off. 

To be fair, it is good to see that companies like Facebook are helping to address the fact that apps like these can get quite addictive. 

I reached out to some folk on Twitter to find out just how much time they’re spending on social networks:

One user says that her social media habits continue to change and evolve and that how long she remains on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram is determined by the content she’s looking at and whether she finds it compelling and engaging:


Another reader already came up with a strategy before this was introduced and says that she resorted to switching off her notifications and installing an app called HabitLab – an extension that has a variety of options for restricting the amount of time spent on different sites.

I think at the end of the day, it might be less about time spent on the app and more about how you use your time in app.

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