Following the building pressure to address the negative mental health effects of social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram have proposed a solution in the form of a new tool. Specifically, new dashboards have been put in place that will allow users to set reminders for themselves when they have reached their self-set time limit as well as mute social media notifications for a period of time.
As for whether this will make a difference, we can only hope it will, although when Grant Blank, from the Oxford Internet Institute, spoke to BBC’s Newsbeat he didn’t sound very hopeful, stating: “I wouldn’t say it’s a radical change or that it’s going to really change a lot about the way that most people use Facebook or Instagram,” adding: “It strikes me as a way to balance their corporate interest of keeping people spending as much time as possible on Facebook, while still being responsive to people who find the continual notifications to be disturbing or distracting.”
