Facebook And Instagram Introduce A Time Limit Tool That Could Help Tackle Social Media Addiction

If you're one of those people who often spends hours on end scrolling aimlessly through your Instagram and Facebook feeds (guilty!) then you'll be interested to hear about their new time limit tool.

Facebook announced the new tool, which aims to tackle social media addiction, and will be available in its app as well as on Instagram.

So what exactly will it entail? You'll have an activity dashboard which will serve as a way to limit notifications and control the time you're spending on the 'gram and FB.

Basically, you'll be able to check how much time you've spent scrolling, set a reminder to go off when you've reached your personal time limit, and mute notification for a period of time.

The company said it "developed these tools based on collaboration and inspiration from leading mental health experts and organisations" as well academics and its users.

You'll be able to see exactly how much time you're spending online by heading to your settings page, then hitting "Your Activity" on Instagram or "Your Time on Facebook" on FB to access the dashboard.

In a statement, Facebook said: "We have a responsibility to help people understand how much time they spend on our platforms so they can better manage their experience."

"It's not just about the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram but how they spend that time," they added.

The announcement comes following reports about how social media has a negative impact on mental health.

Back in December Facebook published a blog post that recognised the negative effects of spending too much time on the platform. In one experiment, students at the University of Michigan who were randomly chosen to simply scroll through Facebook for 10 minutes were "in a worse mood" at the end of the day than those chosen to be more active on the site - posting or talking to friends.

Results from a further study from UC San Diego and Yale showed people who clicked on four times as many links or liked twice as many posts "reported worse mental health than average".

It's no secret that the rise of social media has completely changed the game when it comes to communicating, but you won't struggle to find someone who feels that it's had a negative impact on their life.

We for one are seriously interested to see the tool in action, and whether it can help tackle social media addiction.