Meta (formerly Facebook) has introduced a new feature named "nighttime nudges," designed to alert teenagers when they exceed 10 minutes on its popular photo-sharing platform Instagram during late hours. This feature aims to remind teens of the late hour and encourage them to close the app.
"Sleep is important, particularly for young people, so we're launching new nighttime nudges that will show up when teens have spent more than 10 minutes on Instagram in places like Reels or Direct Messages late at night," Meta announced in a blog post.
"They'll remind teens that it's late, and encourage them to close the app," the blog post added.
This announcement comes days after the social networking giant revealed plans to hide additional forms of age-inappropriate content for teenagers on Instagram and Facebook, aligning with recommendations by experts. The company is implementing an automatic placement of teens into the most stringent content control setting across both platforms, in a bid to conceal age-inappropriate content for teens.
Notably, Teenagers are now automatically placed in the most restrictive content control setting on Meta-owned Instagram as well as Facebook. This setting is applied to new teen accounts upon joining and is being expanded to existing teen users.
The company has emphasised that its aim is to provide teens with secure and age-appropriate experiences on all its platforms.
Aiming to make sure teens are regularly checking their safety and privacy settings on Instagram and they are aware of the more private settings available, Meta is sending new notifications encouraging them to update their settings to a more private experience with a single tap. If teens choose to “Turn on recommended settings”, it will automatically change their settings to restrict who can repost their content, tag or mention them, or include their content in Reels Remixes.
Meta will also ensure only their followers can message them and help hide offensive comments.