Instagram Quietly Bumps up the Minimum Daily Time Limit

Instagram and Facebook have offered ways to see how long you spend using the apps each day and an option to set a daily usage time limit. Now, it seems  has increased the minimum daily time limit setting to 30 minutes, up from 10 or 15 minutes. An Instagram user said that the app asked them to “set a new value” for their daily time limit, noting that they could retain their existing setting.

The available values for daily time limits are changing as part of an app update, a pop-up read. The Instagram app currently offers me a minimum time limit of 30 minutes. Engadget had asked Meta for clarification on when and why it changed. The settings in the Facebook app are more granular.

Users can choose any time limit in increments of five minutes. When a user reaches their time limit selected in either app, a notification pops up to tell them, though they can ignore it. Meta said the idea was to give people more control over the length of time they spend on its apps and “foster conversations between parents and teens” about healthy online habits.

Instagram started testing a “Take a Break” feature to remind users, particularly teens, to put down their phones every so often. This year, Meta expects slower revenue growth due to more competition for people’s time and users paying more attention to features that generate less revenue, such as Reels. Upping the time limit, and keeping users scrolling through Instagram and viewing ads for longer, could be one way of counterbalancing those revenue concerns.