Meta-owned social media platform, Instagram, has introduced a new feature that will help users take a break and focus on other areas of their lives outside social media.
According to Instagram, the feature will also encourage people on the platform to set boundaries with their friends and followers.
Targeted mainly at teens: While the feature is available for every user, Instagram said it is particularly targeted at teens who use the platform.
Once the feature is enabled, users won’t receive any notifications and their profile’s activity status will change to let people know. Instagram said it will also automatically send an auto-reply when someone sends such users a direct message. Part of the statement by Instagram said:
- “Teens have told us that they sometimes want to take time for themselves and might be looking for more ways to focus at night, while studying, and during school. You can easily customize your Quiet mode hours to fit your schedule and once the feature is turned off, we’ll show you a quick summary of notifications so you can catch up on what you missed.
- “Anyone can use Quiet mode, but we’ll prompt teens to do so when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night. Quiet mode is available to everyone in the US, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand starting today, and we hope to bring it to more countries soon,” it added.
Parental control tools: In addition to providing teens with more ways to manage their time and experiences on Instagram, Instagram said it also wants to help parents to be more aware of the choices their teens make, and make it easier for them to have discussions with their teens about their settings through Family Center and supervision tools.
- “Recently, we added the ability for parents to see their teen’s Instagram settings, including privacy and account settings. If their teen updates a setting, parents will receive a notification so they can talk to their teen about the change. Parents can now also view accounts their teen has blocked,” it said.
