How much time do you spend on Facebook and Instagram?

 

Social networking sites Facebook and Instagram are now launching a new tool that will allow people to know how much time they have spent on these apps.

The announcement comes amid concerns that excessive use of social media can have a devastating effect on a person's mental health.

Users will now know how long they scrolled on social media. Now they can also put reminders on their apps to remind them that they have completed the allotted time and they can also turn off the notification sound for a while.

But some people think that it will not be very useful.

Speaking on the BBC's Newsbeat program, Grant Blank of the Oxford Internet Institute said: "I'm not saying this is a big change or the way people use Facebook and Instagram. Something is going to change. ‘

He thinks it's also a way to get people interested in his business to keep people on Facebook. This will still be helpful for people who are disturbed by too many notifications.

Facebook posted a blog post in December 2017 acknowledging the negative effects of spending too much time on it.

Another experiment was performed on students at the University of Michigan in the United States. Meanwhile, students who were asked to scroll through Facebook for 10 minutes had a worse mood at the end of the day than students who were asked to talk to their friends or post something.

Another study from the University of San Diego and Yale in the US found that people who liked a lot of posts twice or those who opened a lot of links four times had better mental health. Understood more of the problem than others.

Waste of time

Lifestyle villager M. Sheldon, 24, told Newsbeat that checking in on her friend is a chore all day.

"I think that's part of the job. I think this has become a problem. We are starting to rely on our phone and social media to keep an eye on it.

"For me, social media is a 24-hour job. But I think it takes a lot of time. I just want to be consistent. "

"I don't know how helpful this new tool will be because I know I use social media a lot," she said.

But he agrees that notifications for reminders can help.

"Maybe it will force me to hang up now."

"If someone reminds me you've been using this app for six hours, I'll say wow, that's too much," she says. What a waste of time.

Harry Hugo, co-founder of digital marketing company Da Got Agency, says the changes have been needed for a long time.

'After being exposed to mental problems. Especially young people who spend a lot of time on platforms. "It's very important that we put things in their place to help us set boundaries."

He thinks that if people realize that they are spending hours on these platforms, then maybe they will think twice while using them.

Harry says he used to use Twitter for 15 to 16 hours as a teenager and now when he thinks about it, he realizes how unhealthy he was.

He says it's up to people to control how they use social media.

"We are the ones who open the phone. We are the ones who have a finger on Instagram. We can't put all this in the hands of Apple and Facebook to solve these problems.