The Instagram Take A Break function is reaching users in Spain, a new notification to disconnect from Instagram for a while and rest . It is the social network’s response to accusations that it knew it caused addiction in teenagers and took advantage of it to its advantage.
Take A Break will appear translated as “Take a break” in Spanish, and allows us to display a warning when exceeding 10, 20 or 30 minutes of daily use . Also, by spending a lot of time on Instagram we will see the suggestion to enable these notices, with more insistent notifications in minors.
The leaking of an internal report where the company recognized the risks of the app in minors forced it to cancel Instagram Kids and promise changes to control the time of use, which are now a reality.
It is possible to manually activate Take A Break from the following path:
Profile -> Menu -> Your activity -> Elapsed time -> Reminder to take breaks
In this same section there is an option to “Set daily time limit”, with periods ranging from 30 minutes to 3 hours. At its core, Take A Break is a stricter variation of the same feature designed to respond to Instagram’s youth addiction scandal.
In fact, the big difference is that Take A Break actively encourages you to log out of Instagram , rather than being a hidden menu in settings. If we spend a lot of time looking at the timeline we will get the suggestion to activate this new feature.
In the case of teenagers, Instagram will send notifications to ensure that minors are aware of this possibility . In his tests, he ensures that 90% of them keep the notices to take a break.
Reaching the limit encourages us to breathe deeply, listen to music, make a to-do list or write, that is, different activities that help us disconnect.
Instagram has added the notices to rest in Spain, if we do not have them we must update Instagram to receive them as soon as possible, and they are also gradually arriving in other countries.
Overall, Instagram’s rest prompts are a step forward , though the challenge of reducing screen time isn’t easy. There are apps to disconnect from the mobile and parental control systems, but in the end, self-control is the key to success.
