Addicted to your phone? Here's what Facebook and Instagram are doing to keep you off it

Facebook and Instagram want to help you control your social media usage by introducing new features that will help in managing the time you spend on their platforms.

Facebook, which owns both these social media platforms, will introduce ways to limit notifications and dashboards that will track the amount of time people spend on the app or website.

Users can set time limit for themselves on the Facebook app and when it is reached during the day, the app will send a reminder. Users will also be able to deactivate notifications.

"We want the time people spend on Instagram and Facebook to be intentional, positive and inspiring. Our hope is that we foster conversations between parents and teens about online habits that are right for them," the statement read.

Apps that help you become 'anti-social'

The new features on Facebook and Instagram come with a good intent, but they are late to the party. Use of social media has been on the rise for the past few years as smartphones and internet penetration increased across the world.

While it started as a way to reconnect with people across the world and inform the masses, it quickly turned into a bad habit and an addiction for many.

This is why, when people realised that social media is making them counterproductive and disrupting their concentration, apps were developed to help them keep away from social media.

Some apps help users time themselves, limit notifications from a number of apps, while others help users block certain sites for a certain number of hours. These apps are available across Google and Apple app stores.

These include the Forest app, (over 50 lakh downloads), Anti-Social app (over 1 lakh downloads), SelfControl (1 lakh downloads), StayFocussed (5 lakh downloads) and many others.

Fears of social media addiction

The amount of time Indians spend on the phone is cause for concern. The fact that people have to use their phones to keep off their phones shows that the dependence is getting unhealthy.

According to a study, the average mobile internet user in India spends 200 minutes a day on mobile apps, 40 percent of which is for social media communication. WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube were the most frequently used apps.

The number of social network users in the country was over 196 million in 2017 and will be over 226 million in 2018, according to a Statista report. This number is set to cross 350 million in four years.

With the government's push for digitisation, smartphone reach and internet connectivity is only going to grow. People will do well, however, to realise when social media's virtues turn into its users' vice.