Instagram tests timer in app that encourages users to take a break

Instagram is testing a feature in the app that encourages users to take a break after ten, twenty or thirty minutes. The intention of the subsidiary of Meta is to release the feature in a few months.

The feature is a setting that allows users to choose whether they want to be notified after ten, twenty, or thirty minutes in the app, to remind them to stop using the app, CEO Adam Mosseric reports. Facebook’s sister company plans to release the feature in December.

The feature is part of a broader suite of features to give users more control over how exactly they use Instagram, Mosseri said. More features like this are likely to follow. Instagram had already announced the arrival of the pause reminder shortly after research came out about Instagram’s negative impact on teens.