“Time for a break?” Instagram plays older with new nightly nudge feature
Instagram has introduced its latest effort to encourage safe social media use among young people. New late night notifications warn teens they’re scrolling when they should be sleeping, in a feature that mimics the effect of a parent knocking on the door and telling you to do so put the phone away.
Meta, owner of Instagram, announced these ‘nighttime nudges’ in a blog post on Thursday, stating that this setting is intended to: “remind teens that it is late, and encourage them to close the app.” This follows the introduction of restrictions on inappropriate content earlier this month.
A ‘nightly nudge’ will appear when underage users have spent more than 10 minutes using interactive features such as Reels or Direct Messages late at night (no information is given about when these nudges may occur). According to a mockup from Meta, teens will find their content blocked by a full-screen notification that says, “Time for a break? It’s getting late. Consider closing Instagram for tonight.”
The ‘nightly push’, which will soon be rolled out to all accounts registered for underage users, is notable for not being optional. Current Instagram Screen Time settings (such as daily limits) require user activation. Rival social media site TikTok, which introduced optional sleep reminders last year, also requires screen time limits to be set.
Of course, teens have the option to simply ignore the late-night nudge and continue scrolling, if they wish. Instagram will not lock its content no matter how long a user has spent on the app. Presumably the company hopes the notification will be annoying enough to motivate closing the app. But since many teens today expect annoying notifications from a range of social media sites, the effectiveness of this warning is questionable.
Currently, the setting is only mandatory for teenagers. Bad news for adult doom scrollers with a lack of self-control – but if you’re really trying to kick the habit, you can add your own nightly nudges by heading into the settings menu and activating a break reminder. Although, again, you can just turn off the notification, snuggle up on your best mattress, and go back to your 3am GRWM binge. That’s probably what many teens will do when faced with an unwanted “nighttime nudge.”