Facebook and Instagram have jointly unveiled a new ‘Your Activity’ section that will help you manage and even reduce the amount of time you spend on their respective apps.

Screen time has become one of the biggest talking points in the technology industry with both Apple and Google now preparing new features for Android phones and iPhones.

The new tools that will be available on both Instagram and Facebook will let you see how much time you spend in the app, let you set limits and even let you mute notifications entirely.

In a blog post Ameet Ranadive, Product Management Director at Instagram
David Ginsberg, Director of Research at 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.”

Previously Instagram had also rolled out a new feature called ‘You’re all caught up’ which would appear on the feed when you’d viewed everything that you hadn’t seen since the last time you used it.

How to use the Your Activity tools in Instagram and Facebook

Both sections will be found in the Settings menu for Instagram and Facebook and will be listed as Your Activity. Once you tap on that you’ll initially be taken to the main dashboard giving you an overview of your last seven days usage.

From there you’ll be able to see any excessive days and even your daily average.

Below this you’ll see the option to Set Daily Reminder and from here you’ll be given some time limits which you can set on yourself ranging from just 1 minute all the way to 12 hours.

Once you reach that allotted amount of time on the app you’ll get a notification telling you that you’ve reached your daily limit. You can keep using the app if you want though, it won’t lock you out of either Facebook or Instagram.

Finally below this tool is the ability to change your Notification Settings. From here you’ll be completely customise the way you get notifications from Instagram or Facebook whether it’s only having your phone vibrate or setting a time period where you can mute the notifications entirely.