Instagram will ask teens to take a break, and nudge when they watch harmful content

• Instagram’s new features planned for teens include ‘take a break’ and ‘nudge’.
• It plans on nudging teens when they’re continuously looking at content that may be harmful to their mental health.
• It will also prompt users to take a break from the app.

Instagram wants teens to take a break from using the app, and it plans on nudging them away from content that may affect their mental health. The new features were announced a week after whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that Facebook research showed Instagram is worse for teenagers than any other social media app. A report by the Wall Street Journal also showed how Facebook knew that Instagram was harmful to teens.

The new ‘take a break’ and ‘nudge’ features were announced by Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP for global affairs and communications, in an interview with CNN. What Facebook plans to do is to detect when a teen is looking at the same content over and over again and if that content “may not be conducive to their well being” then it will nudge them to look over other content. This will only be a nudge and not necessarily a forced refresh of the feed so it will still depend on the teen user what content they wish to see on Instagram.


Another feature of Facebook planning is for teens to take a break from Instagram. This will just be a prompt that Instagram will show when it’s time for them to take a break from the app. But this too will ultimately depend on the user. It’s interesting to see if this feature will have any effect on Instagram’s most active user base. According to a report by Forbes, Instagram was found to be the most popular among Gen Z users in the US who spend almost an hour everyday on the app.

There’s no timeline for the launch of these features yet but the testing will begin soon, The Verge reported. These features also seem to be in line with Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s announcement last month. Mosseri said the company is pausing work on “Instagram Kids”, and will instead work on building opt-in parental supervision tools for teens.

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