Meta-owned Instagram is taking its 'Take A Break' feature across the world, including India, three months it was launched in select markets like the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
As the name suggests, the feature alerts users to take a break from the platform if they have been scrolling for a certain amount of time and suggests that they set reminders to take more breaks in the future.
The company has been testing this feature since last November and it builds on the platform's time management tools such as 'Daily Limit', which let people set reminders to alert them when they have spent a certain amount of time on Instagram.
Instagram said the feature is available on iOS devices with plans to be rolled out on Android devices in a few weeks.
The photo and video sharing platform had announced 'Take A Break' in December along with a handful of features that were aimed at making the platform safer for teenagers, amid scrutiny over leaked internal research that said the app adversely affected some young users.
"The well-being of young people is important to us, and we’re focused on ensuring that the time spent on Instagram is intentional and people feel good about it. We aim to continue our work to create a safe and supportive environment on Instagram, so young people can use it to explore their interests, and find community," said Natasha Jog, public policy manager, Instagram, Facebook India.
This launch comes on heels of Facebook reporting its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users on February 2. While Meta does not provide Instagram's quarterly user base, daily users across its family of apps grew slightly from 2.81 billion to 2.82 billion for Q4 2021.
This has reopened the debate around the tech giant's problem of attracting new younger audiences onto its platform. "We believe competitive services are negatively impacting growth, particularly with younger audiences," Meta CFO Dave Wehner said during the company's earnings conference call on February 2.
Meta also lost $230 billion market value in a single day on February 3, making it the biggest one-day loss for a US company.
Mark Zuckerberg said they are currently in the middle of transitioning their services towards short-form video like Reels due to which they are replacing "some time in News Feed and other higher monetising surfaces".
Going forward, Meta also plans to invest in simplifying video across Instagram, building more creative and monetization tools for creators, and helping more people discover and interact with relevant Reels, he said.
Read: Facebook saw slower user growth in India due to increased data pricing: Meta CFO Dave Wehner
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