On February 3, Meta, the parent company of Instagram, tanked a whopping 26% on the stock market making it the worst one-day loss since it hit the Nasdaq in 2012 and the biggest drop ever for a US business. And… the share price continues to slide. As of this writing, Meta is down 37% YoY. Perhaps, this background gives a little bit of insight into Instagram’s hush hush “update” of their mental health feature called “Daily Limits” which was launched to help users keep track of how much time they spend on the app.
Formerly “Daily Limits” could be programmed as low as 10-15 minutes with a notification popping up to warn users it was time to get off the site. But, with the new “update” people are strong-armed into setting their viewing time to 30 minutes and higher. Interesting change of heart for a company that originally did a big PR push claiming it supported a low user-defined limit as reported on by TechCrunch. Which brings us back to that sliding share price. Meta didn’t even comment on why they implemented the update so one can only assume with the timing of their market plunge that they’re trying to keep users invested in the app to sell advertisements and help their stock price rebound.
What are “Daily Limits”?
Introduced in early 2018, “Daily Limits” was an answer to mitigate bad press from a slew of researchers, journalists and later even filmmakers who warned of the dangers of living, breathing and sleeping social media all day. Meta (as evidenced by their earlier PR push) wanted it to look like they cared about mental health and was doing something about it by installing the feature so people would get a wake-up call that hey, this stuff is addictive. And to be fair maybe they did care… as long as they were making those numbers every quarter. It’s a good hypothesis that Meta felt desperate (not desperate enough to extend an olive branch to the adult industry however) and turned up the “Daily Limits” to keep eyeballs peeled on screens for hours on end in the hopes of pickling their brains so they can sell, sell, sell to them to drive, drive, drive earnings.
Even more insidious than Meta keeping the Instagram “update” on the down-low is the way they manipulate users into changing their limit to a higher number. TechCrunch reported about the issue after getting an anonymous tip off from a user who shared screenshots. Though Instagram claims you can keep your 10-minute notification, if you do, you’re hit with a myriad of popups saying “This value is no longer supported. Please edit.” Further, if you try to make an edit and don’t choose a higher time, you must “force quit” the program to make it work again.
Now that’s called sneaky underhanded business smarts!
The company did leave users with the “Take A Break” Feature which alerts you if you’ve been scrolling too long. But hey, when you’re addicted and you’re using (scrolling) it’s kinda hard to knock that monkey off your back right in the moment, isn’t it?
Whatever the case, it’s ironic that Instagram and Meta refuse to entertain any business with the adult industry under the guise of promoting “a safe environment for everyone” but turn a blind eye to the fact that using their product 24/7 is anything but safe and is linked with multiple studies from Harvard to Forbes to the Mayo Clinic confirming it causes depression, sleep problems, peer pressure, eating disorders and more. Further, now that Meta’s changed the mental health feature to trick users into staying on their site more than 10-20 minutes at a time, who’s the villain here? The adult industry or Meta/Instagram?
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Alyssa Collins hails from Minnesota, where snowy days were the perfect excuse to stay warm inside and write. Over the years, she turned that joy into a career and has authored numerous articles for various publications (under pen names). Email Alyssa via alyssa@ynot.com.
Header image via Pexels.com.
