WASHINGTON ― It’s easy to lose track of time on TikTok. With users often complaining that they unwittingly have spent their whole night “scrolling”, the Chinese giant has decided to tackle this problem by launching, among other new features, alerts to push them to go to sleep.
It may seem rather surprising, but TikTok has decided to look out for ensuring that its users get enough sleep, AFP reportred.
If the platform has often been criticized for hooking users into watching an endless stream of short videos, the social network wants to work on its reputation by improving its moderation tools and in particular features aimed at managing screen time.
According to reports confirmed by TechCrunch, TikTok is working on “sleep reminders.” This feature will allow users to indicate their bedtime directly on the app in order to receive an alert when the time comes to close it and to go to sleep.
In addition to nudging users to quit the social network to go to bed, TikTok will pause notifications for seven hours in an effort to promote better sleep, based on expert advice. According to screenshots, the option will be available in the “Screen Time” setting.
However, this is not the first time that the platform has decided to offer users ways to monitor and control their screen time. Back in 2019, TikTok offered users tools for managing the time they spend online. Since then, the platform has added more initiatives aimed at encouraging users to take breaks and continues to show videos reminding a user to take a break if they stay logged in too long on the app.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet users saw their time spent online increase significantly but now the trend is towards a decrease in screentime with levels on the decline.
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