Instagram Quietly Cranks Up Daily Screen Time Limits For Some Reason

If you normally take just 15 minutes of your day to check Instagram, news flash: you’re probably spending too little time on it. That’s at least the kind of message sent across to some users when the social media platform quietly raised its daily usage time limits and removed the minimum 10-minute and 15-minute blocks.

The ‘Daily Limits’ feature has been around on Facebook and Instagram since 2018 with the supposed aim to “give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.” The company now known as Meta said it was one of the app usage tools that it introduced following consultation with mental health experts and organizations. 

Later on, in November 2021, Instagram rolled out ‘Take A Break’, which allows users to set reminders at various intervals to trigger a full-screen popup prompting them to close the app. The platform described this feature as an extension of Daily Limits and other time management tools.

Then, this week, users who have opted-in for Daily Limits began seeing a message by Instagram asking them to “set a new value” for their time blocks. “The available values for daily time limits are changing as part of an app update,” Instagram told them. They were, however, still allowed to keep the old limits, TechCrunch reports.

The minimum limit has been increased to 30 minutes. Interestingly, Instagram has displayed the time options in descending order, placing the three-hour setting first.

Engadget and TechCrunch speculate that Meta may have been motivated to make these changes after it recorded a fall in daily active Facebook users for the first time ever in the last quarter—though it’s also worth noting that Instagram visitorship had been consistent.

Instagram’s PR team has since justified the update as a means to be less of an annoyance, commenting on Twitter: “We changed the ‘daily limit’ options to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time.”

“Our existing ‘daily limit’ shows you a notification when you’ve hit your daily limit, but our newest feature ‘Take A Break’ shows you full-screen reminders to leave the app, and includes 10-minute intervals,” says a spokesperson.

[via PetaPixel, Engadget, TechCrunch, images via various sources]