Instagram Brings New Tools to Cut Down Usage But Will it Work?

The Facebook-owned photo sharing platform has added new tools that look to cut down how you use the app.

With long hours of digital device usage becoming a rampant problem, many smartphone users are seeking a ‘digital detox’ that in some way to prevent their consumption from turning into an addiction.

This brings us to Instagram. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing and social-messaging platform is one of the apps that is tweaking the way it does business and sort of asking its users to cut down their day-to-day usage.

It’s intriguing to see brands like Facebook, after accumulating billions of users across the globe, are now using words like "responsibility", "online impact" and "comfortable" among others. And for this, it has created a new set of tools to prevent users from mindless scrolling and overuse of the app.

We have heard Instagram talking about adding these tools earlier. Recently, we managed to speak to the company and get more details about why it is doing this. And that too at a time when people are resorting to digital rehabilitation sessions to cure them of screen addiction.

We developed these tools (Time Spent) based on collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organisations, academics, our own extensive research and feedback from our community. 

Tara Bedi, Public Policy and Community Outreach Manager, Instagram, India

These measures were talked about on the sidelines of the second edition of the South Asia Safety Summit hosted by Facebook. This event discussed topics like digital safety and security.

Instagram also highlighted that the time spent tools are an important step in curing digital addiction. It said it is committed to continuing its work to foster safe, kind and supportive communities for everyone. This feature is also available for millions of its users in India.

Time Spent is one of the tools that have been added to the platform recently.

In October, users were given the option to "Restrict" access from unwanted profiles and more importantly, started hiding "likes" from user profiles for shared photos or posts well. That’s not all, in February this year, it started prohibiting graphic images of self-harm and also managed to track down harmful content as well.

Will it Work?

Without really stating the impact of these tools, Instagram is trying to justify the measures put in place, and it will probably take sometime before the changes introduced really offer the users a safer and different Instagram to the one we’ve been used to for all these years.

While the feedback from early testing (of hiding likes) has been positive, this is a fundamental change to Instagram, and so we’re continuing our test to learn more from our global community.

Tara Bedi, Public Policy and Community Outreach Manager, Instagram, India

After all the negative feedback Facebook and its products have been getting, one has to hope that it will eventually be able to fix the problems at its end and users will experience that in the days to come.