Instagram seems to have quietly discontinued shorter time limit options for users, increasing the minimum daily time limit to 30 minutes. Previously, the app allowed you to set daily time limits as low as five minutes.

With the latest update, the popular photo-sharing app now shows a popup nudging the user to set a new daily time limit, first seen by TechCrunch. It then displays all the preset options, with the lowest being 30 minutes, and the three-hour option occupying the top most slot.

Although the popup says that the user can stick with their current limit if they wish to do so, navigating to the activity page shows that the 10-minute option is “no longer supported.” So much for so-called transparency in 2022. The new options are limited to 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour, two hours, and three hours.

Instagram introduced the daily time limit option back in 2018. The option allows you to set a daily time limit, and you will be sent a reminder once the limit is reached, coming in handy for those who want to reduce their consumption of social media. The company claimed that it wanted to “empower people to make intentional decisions about how much time they spend, and how they want to engage with the app.” It now appears that the Meta-owned firm is slowly trying to backpedal on its intentions to ensure that its users spend more time on the app, and in turn, reaping more ad revenue.

Our Take

The change comes after Meta reported a first-ever decline in the number of daily users earlier this month. The company tried to shift part of the blame on Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and added that it could cost it $10 billion in 2022. Meta may now be looking inwards and trying to ramp up engagement for apps such as Instagram by implementing such measures.