Facebook finally started rolling out the “Your time on Facebook” feature which is similar to “Your activity” on Instagram and “Screen Time” on iPhones.
The new feature which is only available for iOS users for now tells users the average time they spend on the Facebook app per day, in addition to a chart that daily usage in hours and minutes. It can be accessed in the Settings & Privacy Tab in the overflow menu located at the bottom of the app.
The new feature also has a “Manage your time” section that allows user to manage their time on Facebook whereby they can customise their news feed by following and unfollowing other users and also prioritising posts that will appear on their news feed. Users will also get the option to set a daily reminder which serves to remind them once they’ve reached the limit of using Facebook in a day. Besides that, users can also edit their notifications by muting push notifications and choosing what notifications they want to receive.
Instagram also launched a similar feature awhile back for its iOS users, where they can see their usage time on Instagram by clicking on the sidebar menu at the Profile tab. It is similar to Facebook’s new features, except that it doesn’t allow users to customise their news feed and doesn’t have the access to mange their followers and followings, unlike Facebooks “Friends on Facebook” section that will let its users add or remove friends and also accept friend requests.
While the feature in Facebook serves as a purpose to maintain users’ app usage, it does not have a very strict restriction that can limit users from overusing the app, hence users will first have to be disciplined enough to control their usage on Facebook when they are reminded that they’ve reached the limit of usage.