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New Facebook feature could reveal how much time you're wasting on its app

"Your Time on Facebook" will tell users how long they spend in the app and let them set up notifications to avoid overuse.
By
June 25, 2018
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TL;DR
  • Facebook is working on a new feature called “Your Time on Facebook.”
  • It shows users how much time they have spent on the app over the previous seven days.
  • YouTube and Instagram have also launched features dedicated to helping users manage time in their apps.

Facebook is working on a feature that will show users how long they spent on the mobile app. The new feature, called “Your Time on Facebook,” was found within the Facebook app by Twitter user Jane Manchun Wong. Facebook confirmed the feature to Tech Crunch.

According to screenshots posted by Wong, the feature will show users the total amount of time they spent per day on the Facebook app over the previous seven days, as well as the average time spent per day. It also appears to allow users to set up notifications to let them know when they reach a certain amount of time spent in the app.

Facebook is working on “Your Time on Facebook” which could help users to manage their time spent on Facebook app.
Instagram is also working on helping users to improve their digital wellbeing: https://t.co/y38mV3RtqB
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 22, 2018

At the start of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that one of the company’s goals for 2018 is making sure that the time people spend on Facebook is “time well spent.” Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook would begin to shift the focus away from helping users find relevant content, to helping them have more meaningful interactions when using the service.

The potential “Your Time on Facebook” feature doesn’t appear to have any way of categorizing how a user spends time on the app and whether or not the time spent is “meaningful.” However, people who worry about the amount of time they spend on the app are still likely to find the minutes spent stats useful.

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Facebook isn’t the only tech company working on features to help users manage how they spend their time in apps. In May, Instagram confirmed it was working on tools to help users know more about how they spent time on its service, while YouTube has already added an option on its mobile app for users to set notifications to remind them to take some time off.

In Android P, Google is also expected to include an Android Dashboard which would give users information about how they spend time on their phone, as well as an App Timer which will let them set time limits for certain apps.

Next up: Go ahead, delete Facebook. You’ll be back.