Facebook and Instagram have launched a feature that will help users track the amount of time they spent on the social networks in order to promote digital well-being, TechCrunch reports. The time-management dashboards will be available starting today in the US, and will be rolled out globally in the coming weeks.
The dashboards will give users a raw count of the minutes they spend in the apps each day as well as a weekly average, helping them be more mindful of their social media habits.
However, the feature is not very visible on the app, it makes no effort to compel less usage and doesn’t distinguish between passive and active behaviour, as studies have shown that the most harmful activity is the passive feed scrolling we tend to do on these networks, and not the active communication with our friends.
The dashboards also don’t include the minutes we spend on Facebook and Instagram’s desktop versions, on tablets or on other Facebook-related apps. There also isn’t any information about the average time spent by various age groups or countries on the apps. However, you can set a daily “limit” within the app, meaning that it will send you a notification when you’ve reached the threshold.