SAN FRANCISCO — Aware of the accusations against them, particularly of young people who find themselves addicted, social networks are increasingly looking to introduce tools to help us to better manage our time spent online. And they aren’t shy about communicating on these developments, in a bid to help restore their image.
Let’s take a look at the features that have already been rolled out, AFP reported.
Instagram and Facebook: The ‘right to disconnect’ and time limit reminders
Instagram has decided to focus on the ‘right to disconnect’. With the ‘quiet mode’, the Meta group social network gives its users the ability to mute notifications. Once the mode is activated, users will not receive alerts from the social network or direct messages from other users, to whom an automatic response will be sent.
A summary of missed notifications will be revealed to users when they deactivate quiet mode.
Instagram also noted that teen accounts will receive a prompt to activate this mode when they spend “a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night”. For now this feature is only available in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but it is expected to be rolled out in other countries.
Instagram also offers users the ability to set a daily screen time limit. To do so, users must click on the drop-down menu present on their profile, then on the “Your activity” tab, followed by “Time spent”. From there, users can click on the “Set daily time limit” category.
They will be able to set a reminder to close the application when they reach a set amount of daily screen time. There are five choices: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours. The feature is disabled by default.
The social network also allows users to set reminders to take breaks for every 10, 20 or 30 minutes spent online without interruption.
Finally, the Meta group also lets users activate and even program the quiet mode and daily time reminders on Facebook. Users of this social network can set a reminder for exceeding a minimum of five minutes to 23 hours and 55 minutes.
Snapchat puts the brakes on notifications
While Snapchat may not have yet implemented an option for users to limit the time spent online, the social network nevertheless allows them to manage what notifications they receive. By going to their profile settings, the user can then click on the tab “Notifications” and choose to disable them.
To go further, users will have to go directly through their smartphone settings to establish a screen time limit that results in specified apps closing directly once that time is exceeded.
TikTok encourages sleeping and screen time limits
The Chinese social network made a major move recently by announcing a 60-minute daily screen time limit for people under 18. After this time, users will have to enter a password to continue using the application, essentially requiring them to discuss it with their parents and get their approval.
Like its competitors, TikTok allows users to disable notifications. Parents can adjust the settings themselves by disallowing push notifications. TikTok had already put this system into place for accounts of users under 16 years old to not receive notifications after 9pm and after 10pm for 16-17 year olds.
In addition to these features, the platform had already unveiled “sleep reminders”: an option allowing users to indicate their bedtime directly on the app in order to receive an alert when the time comes to close it in order to go to sleep.
