Meta-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram reportedly appears to have quietly removed the ability for mobile users to set a lower daily time limit reminder than 30 minutes.
Indeed, the app’s UX design nudges people to choose a three-hour ‘limit’, TechCrunch reported on Monday.
This daily time limit setting pops up a notification to the user once their app activity hits their preferred limit, reminding them to be conscious of how much time they are spending on the app — and maybe making it easier for them to choose to quit out of the app voluntarily.
Previously the company supported a user-defined limit for Instagram that could be as low as 15 minutes, or even 10 minutes, per day, when it was making a big PR push to suggest that more ‘mindful’ usage of its services as possible, as concern over social media addiction surged.
But it seems the attention-loving adtech giant now wants Instagram users to spend longer eyeballing content feeds on the platform where it can cash in by targeting them with ads, the report said.
TechCrunch was alerted to the Instagram settings change by a tipster who shared screenshots of their account, which show the company nudging them to “set a new value for your daily limit” because, as it puts it, “the available daily limits are changing as part of an app update”.
