Time Well Spent

Facebook may finally let you turn off those annoying notification dots

Sick of those anxiety-inducing red dots constantly appearing on the Groups, Watch, or other tabs in your Facebook app? Well the social network may be easing up a little in its unending war for your at

Facebook and Instagram now show how many minutes you use them

It’s passive zombie-feed scrolling, not active communication with friends, that hurts our health, according to studies Facebook has been pointing to for the last seven months. Yet it’s tre

Instagram’s Do Not Disturb and ‘Caught Up’ deter overgramming

Instagram is turning the Time Well Spent philosophy into features to help users avoid endless scrolling and distraction by notifications. Today, Instagram is rolling out its “You’re All Ca

Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it

Are you ready for some scary numbers? After months of Mark Zuckerberg talking about how “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” Facebook is preparing to turn

First look at Instagram’s self-policing Time Well Spent tool

Are you Overgramming? Instagram is stepping up to help you manage overuse rather than leaving it to iOS and Android’s new screen time dashboards. After TechCrunch first reported Instagram was pr

Instagram says ‘you’re all caught up’ in first time-well-spent feature

Without a chronological feed, it can be tough to tell if you’ve seen all the posts Instagram will show you. That can lead to more of the compulsive, passive, zombie browsing that research sugges

Instagram CEO confirms upcoming “time spent” Usage Insights

Instagram is jumping into the time well spent movement, following the unveiling of Google’s new time management controls last week. Code buried in Instagram’s Android app reveals a “

Facebook’s U.S. user count declines as it prioritizes well-being

Facebook is putting its short-term money where its mouth is, reducing the presence of viral videos in an effort to boost well-being of users of its site. In Facebook’s Q4 2017 earnings report t

Facebook survives Q4 despite slowest daily user growth ever

Despite worries about Russia and that passive News Feed scrolling hurts us, Facebook beat expectations again in its Q4 2017 earnings report. Facebook now has 1.4 billion daily users, up 2.18% compared

Facebook feed change sacrifices time spent and news outlets for ‘well-being’

Facebook is making a huge change to its News Feed algorithm to prioritize friends and posts that spark comments between them at the expense of public content, news outlets and, importantly, the total

The difference between good and bad Facebooking

"Social media" is a clumsy term that entangles enriching social interaction with mindless media consumption. It's a double-edged sword whose sides aren't properly distinguished. Taken as a whole, we c