Instagram removes some of its Daily Limit notifications time options

It seems like Meta is less keen on helping you keep on top of your social media usage, and more specifically, on Instagram. The company has quietly updated its “Daily Limit” feature, which was designed to let you receive a notification if you spend too much time on the app. Now, instead of adding more control to the feature, Meta has decided to reduce the time options for these notifications, reports 9to5Mac.

Instagram’s Daily Limit notifications lose some options with a new update

The Daily Limit notification feature was introduced back in 2018, and it allowed you to receive notifications on your Instagram usage after spending as little as 10 minutes per day on the app. It seems that Meta now thinks 10 minutes is just too little time to spend on Instagram and has now raised this limit to 30 minutes.

The setting interface has also been slightly redesigned, and it now shows the longer time options first in the list (the three hours one). Despite that though, you can still have a full-screen reminder to leave the app after 10 minutes through the “Take a Break” feature, but we can’t help but think that Instagram has made it harder for users to monitor their app usage and the time they spend on the social network.

The company has stated in a tweet that this little update is aimed at making the Daily Limit option less confusing for users, but as TechCrunch rightfully notes, this change does come after Meta’s Q4 2021 report. In the report, the company revealed it wasn’t making as much money and as consequence, its share value dropped significantly.

The thing is, spending more time on Instagram gives more opportunities to be targeted with advertisements. iOS users do have a workaround with iPhone’s Screen Time feature that allows you to set limits for any app anyways.

Instagram could be harmful to young people’s mental health, and Meta knew this, reported a whistleblower last year

Meta has reported it has lost some money because of Apple’s ATT (and other reasons)

We reported recently about Meta’s Q4 2021 earnings report and the subsequent decline in Meta shares’ value, which seems to be continuing to go down and is now (at the time of writing) hit around $206.16. At the beginning of this month, the drop was quite significant and Meta dropped by a whopping $73.95 and was at $249.05.

For reference, on February 2, before the big drop in stock value, the company’s shares were $323. It seems for less than a month, Meta’s shares’ value dropped by more than $100.

Meta’s report on revenue indicated that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (a feature that lets iOS users opt-out of third-party tracking for targeted ads), alongside other factors, had the company lose some money and caused it to reshape the way its ad tech worked, at least for iPhone and iPad users.

On the other hand, many of you may know that Meta is the new name for Facebook the company, and the company rebranded in October. It seems the company considers the metaverse to be the future of social media. The metaverse, for those of you who don’t know, is basically a virtual reality world where you can interact with others with avatars that represent you.

Despite the rebranding though, it seems Facebook has been struggling recently. Not long ago, there was a whistleblower named Frances Haugen who shared some concerning facts about how Facebook and Instagram chose profit over the safety of their users. Among the things the whistleblower disclosed, were some documents indicating the company was aware of how Instagram could impact young users’ mental health negatively but chose to ignore it.

Since then, Instagram got the “Take a Break” feature aimed at helping teenagers (or anyone really) to reduce their time on Instagram.