Remember that neat feature the Wii had where it would passive-aggressively remind you to take a break to make you feel guilty for playing 6 straight hours of Mario Kart? Well, Instagram’s getting something similar, which tells teenagers to take a break if they scroll mindlessly for a set period of time.
Touch some grass
Instagram’s been testing the feature for around a month now, which sets a prompt to appear every 10, 20 or 30 minutes to tell users to take a break.
According to The Verge, Instagram says it’s had largely positive feedback. Around 90% of users who tested the opt-in feature have apparently left it on for a substantial amount of time. Whether that’s because they like it or because they can’t be bothered enough to turn it off is up to interpretation.
The “Take a Break” feature is rolling out first for Instagram users in the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, according to an official blog post by CEO Adam Mosseri (who recently had a meeting with the US Congress over teen safety on the app).
The post goes on to outline another safety change relating to teens. Specifically, teenaged and younger users (or at least those who didn’t fib about their age in their profiles) can no longer be tagged by other users who don’t follow them. This sounds like an extension of another safety feature implemented earlier this year. This change should roll around early next year.
The post vaguely mentions some other safety measures Instagram plans to put in place within the next year, such as “nudging teens towards different topics if they’ve been dwelling on one topic for a long time” and a new set of tools for parents and guardians to monitor and moderate how their teenagers use Instagram.
While these are all decent, if slightly vague sentiments, it’s quite clear that Instagram is trying to draw attention away from the current bad press it’s getting over how it affects teenagers. Even Facebook/Meta and Instagram itself knows the risks it poses to young, impressionable users. And putting in features that seem like they should have been there in the first place doesn’t do much to make up for that.