Facebook and Instagram announce tools to manage and limit time on sites

Facebook and Instagram are launching a set of tools to help users manage their time on the social media platforms.Encouraging healthy use of their platforms has long been a priority for Facebook and Instagram, according to Facebook’s global announcement.

“We developed these tools based on collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organisations, academics, our own extensive research and feedback from our community,” Facebook said its in announcement.

“We want the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram to be intentional, positive and inspiring. Our hope is that these tools 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 three tools, listed below, will be available in the coming weeks:

• a dashboard that shows the average time people have spent in the app, on that device, in the past week.
• a customisable daily time reminder, a timer you can set to give you an alert when you’ve exceeded what you think is an appropriate amount of time on the app.
• a mute notifications setting to limit notifications.