Facebook has started rolling out a new feature called ‘Your Time on Facebook’, which tells you how much time you’ve been wasting on the social network.
It was first announced back in August, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Your Time on Facebook tells you how many minutes you’ve been spending on the app.
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It also lets you mute notifications and allows you to set daily usage limits, with a ‘Daily Reminder’ popping up once you’ve hit that limit. However, you’ll be able to continue using the app if you want.
Unfortunately, Your Time on Facebook only appears to be available on the Facebook app right now (via Matt Navarra and TechCrunch). That means it won’t take into account the time you spend on the Facebook website.
That’s a major shortcoming for obvious reasons, but it also means that users who have deliberately uninstalled the Facebook app need to download the Facebook app again if they want to make use of it. Not ideal.
“At the top, you’ll see a dashboard showing your average time [spent on Facebook] on that device. Tap any bar to see your total time for that day,” Facebook wrote in a blog post explaining the feature back in August.
“Below the dashboard, you can set a daily reminder to give yourself an alert when you’ve reached the amount of time you want to spend on [Facebook] for that day. You can change or cancel the reminder at any time.
“You can also tap on “Notification Settings” to quickly access the new “Mute Push Notifications” setting. This will limit your Facebook … notifications for a period of time when you need to focus.”
You can access the feature by diving into the main menu in the Facebook app, and tapping Settings & Privacy and then Your Time on Facebook.
Facebook recently added a similar tool to Instagram, called Your Activity.
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“We want the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram to be intentional, positive and inspiring,” the company’s August blog post continues.
“Our hope is that these tools give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.”
How do you limit the amount of time you spend on certain apps? Share your experiences @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
