Instagram and its parent company Meta (formerly Facebook) has faced intense scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, advocates, and users, particularly regarding its effect on younger users. As part of their effort “to try and give people more control over their experience” on the platform, they are starting to test a new feature called “Take A Break”. If they opt-in, users will receive a nudge that they’ll see on their feed to, well, take a break, and do something else instead of continually scrolling.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared in a video posted on Twitter that they will be testing out the feature that will encourage users to pause from using the app after a certain amount of time spent scrolling or posting. This will be an opt-in feature so only those who believe they have to regulate how they use the app will probably use it when it rolls out to a wider audience. The prompt will show up on the feed but it will not be full screen.
Testing “Take a Break” 🧑🔬
We started testing a new feature called “Take a Break” this week. This opt-in control enables you to receive break reminders in-app after a duration of your choosing.
I’m excited to dig into the results & hopefully launch this sometime in December. ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/WdSTjL6ZdH
— Adam Mosseri 😷 (@mosseri) November 10, 2021
The prompt will ask you “Want to take a break” and you have the option to “Turn on” or ignore it and tap “Not now”. You will then choose the length of time you can send before getting another prompt to take a break. The options are 10, 20, or 30 minutes and there’s also the option to turn the prompt off if you change your mind. When the “timer” is up, the prompt will show up and ask (rather than tell) you, “Time for a break?”.
The prompt also includes some suggestions on what you can do while taking that break from Instagram. Suggestions are “take a few deep breaths, write down what you’re thinking, listen to your favorite song, do something on your to-do list”. This an opt-in thing so it would be interesting to see what percentage of users will actually turn it on and then heed the prompt and put their phone down or at least switch to a different activity on their device.
The Take A Break feature is already rolling out to random Instagram users that are part of the test. When they are “comfortable” enough with it, they will be bringing it to more users in the coming months.
