Mindless Scrolling: Instagram's Newest Feature Aims To Stop You Doing Just That

Constantly scrolling through your Insta feed is a habit that’s hard to shake, we totally get it. It’s where you find all your fashion and beauty inspo, stalk your favourite influencers and save pretty pics of your dream wedding (no, just me?).
But that doesn’t change the fact that, if you’re not careful, it can be the biggest time-waster—and even the app itself is well aware of the negative impact it can have on its users.
A few months back, TechCrunch reported that the social media platform was looking at introducing a “usage insights” feature that actually told you how exactly you’re spending your time and how many hours you’ve clocked up looking at pics of said inspo shots.
Interestingly enough, it seems as though Instagram is comfortable with users spending less time with their product if it means supporting mental health in a meaningful way.
The newest feature that supports this notion is the roll-out of notifications that let you know that you’re actually up to date with the content in your feed.
You may have noticed over the last week or so an alert that notifies you when you’ve caught up with everything over the past two days.
It’s kind of a nice way of saying, “Okay, you’re done here, put your phone down and go and do something else”.

Clearly designed with the “Time Well Spent” movement in mind, TechCrunch reports that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has been vocal about prioritising wellbeing over profits.
“I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down… If we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too,” TechCrunch quotes Zuckerberg as saying.
“Time Well Spent” is a non-profit organisation which aims to reverse what is referred to as the “digital attention crisis” driven by our obsession with social media.
In related news, TechCrunch has also learned that both Facebook and Instagram are prototyping ‘Do Not Disturb’ features that let users disable notifications from the apps for different time periods or until they’re actually turned back on manually in the aim of eliminating distractions in your day-to-day.
Are you spending too much time on social media? Why not try a mini digi detox or applying the concept of intermittent fasting to curb your phone addition (yah, it’s a thing).