Facebook and Instagram add activity dashboards to help people govern social media usage

Shawn Knight

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A hot potato: With social media usage at an all-time high, tools to help people manage time spent on such platforms arguably can't arrive soon enough. Whether or not people will adopt them in any meaningful way, however, remains to be seen.

Facebook is looking to give people more control over the time they spend on the platform – and Instagram – with their latest addition, an activity dashboard.

To access the new tool, simply visit the settings page within either app. On Facebook, you’ll want to look for “Your Time on Facebook” and on Instagram, tap the “Your Activity” option. Here, you’ll see the average time spent on the app on that particular device (notably, not the total amount of time spent on the social network across all platforms) and have the ability to set reminders when you’ve reached the amount of time you want to spend on the app in a given day.

There’s also the option to manage notifications, allowing you to mute them entirely for a set period of time if you need a break or limit them to vibrations only.

Ameet Ranadive, product management director at Instagram, and David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook, said in announcing the new tools that they want the time people spend on their platforms to be intentional, positive and inspiring. They also hope the tools will foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year said the company was intent on encouraging meaningful connections on the social network rather than passive consumption of content.

The updates are said to be rolling out soon across Facebook and Instagram.

Lead image via Getty Images

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