Instagram tests new 'Take a Break' feature to encourage users to limit time in app

San Francisco: We often find ourselves spending a lot of time staring at the screen with mindless and sometimes endless scrolling. And most of you must have wondered if there was a way to take your dedicated time away from the app and be productive.

Now photo-sharing app Instagram has come up with a mindful feature for that. As per reports, the company is testing a new user wellbeing option called 'Take a Break', which will enable users to set reminders to take some time away from the app after a certain period of activity – either 10-, 20- or 30-minutes.

According to Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, the long-awaited 'Take a Break' feature will remind users when they have spent a long time on the platform.

'Take a Break' is expected to be more widely available in December, Mosseri added.

The new feature comes amid increased criticism that Instagram is harmful to its teen users. Recently, American whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed how popular social media apps can adversely affect young people's mental health.

Haugen said Facebook knows that kids in their most vulnerable moments are harmed by its systems. She said Facebook has figured out that around the age of 14, right before high school, is when kids are most likely to get sucked into Instagram's emotional roller-coaster

Meanwhile, Facebook's Vice President of global affairs Nick Clegg, said that the photo-sharing platform will introduce new features to remove bad content.

"We're going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that a teenager is looking at the same content over and over again, and it's content which may not be conducive to their well-being, we will nudge them to look at other content," Clegg said.