Instagram and Facebook have given options to track how much time you spend using their apps each day for the past couple of years, as well as the ability to establish a daily use time restriction. Instagram's minimum daily time restriction setting appears to have been up to 30 minutes, up from 10 or 15 minutes previously.

According to TechCrunch, Instagram prompted users to "establish a new value" for their daily time restriction, albeit they could keep their previous setting. A pop-up stated, "The possible values for daily time limitations are changing as part of an app upgrade."

The Instagram app now sets a 30-minute time limit for me. Engadget has reached out to Meta for further information on when and why the adjustment was made. The Facebook app's settings are more detailed. Users can set any time restriction in five-minute increments. When a user in either app hits their selected time limit, a notice appears, which they can ignore.

Meta claimed at the time that the feature was introduced that it was designed to offer users greater control over how much time they spent on its applications and to "encourage dialogues between parents and kids" about good internet habits. Instagram began testing a "Take a Break" feature in November to urge users, particularly adolescents, to put down their phones from time to time. It's unclear why Instagram's daily time restriction appears to have been increased. However, the timing is intriguing because Facebook's daily active users fell for the first time last quarter, although Meta's family of applications (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) grew at an almost flat rate.

Due to increased competition for people's time and users' increased attention on features that produce less income, such as Reels, Meta anticipates revenue growth to be slower this year. Increase the time limit to keep users browsing around Instagram and viewing advertising for longer, which might help offset income issues.