Sometimes I see innocuous announcements of tech news that end up making me nervous. Like, a little information itch and for some reason I start to feel clairvoyant, as if I have just been given some clue into the future.
Today is one of those days.
TechCrunch recently reported that there’s an unreleased “Your Time on Facebook” feature located in the social media giant’s Android app.
The feature tallies how much time you spend on the Facebook app on your phone on each of the last seven days, as well as your average time spent per day. It also lets you set a daily reminder that alerts you when you’ve reached your self-imposed limit, plus a shortcut to change your Facebook notification settings.
Facebook confirmed the feature development to TechCrunch, and a spokesperson told them, “We’re always working on new ways to help make sure people’s time on Facebook is time well spent.”
This self-policing feature comes at an interesting time for new iOS and Android features, both of which are launching their own respective screen time monitoring dashboards. These ones alert and can also lock you out of an app once you hit your limit.
Facebook subsidiary Instagram also confirmed that they’re making something similar.
As reported by TechCrunch, Insta’s CEO Kevin Systrom said, “We’re building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram – any time should be positive and intentional… Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it’s the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously.”
Why should you care?
As sites like Facebook try to help (“help” — I am suspicious of anything Facebook does) users’ time slip away less, spaces like Lifehack offer “15 Websites That Make Your Time Spent On The Internet Productive.” Vocabulary building, reading stuff and brain teasers are just a few of their suggestions.
Never in any of these spaces will we see hat tips to developing interpersonal skills or satisfying romantic needs online, but that’s to be expected in our sex-negative social world. It’s interesting to me though to consider the rumblings about what constitutes quality time online, how these rumblings shift and what these shifts may mean to members and fans.
Always be paying attention. One little app feature is never *just* one little app feature.
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Erika is a sex positive people watcher (and writer). Email her at erika@ynotcam.com.
