Fifteen weeks after Facebook announced its tool "Your time on Facebook", which counts how many minutes you spend on the application, the function is finally being implemented around the world. Designed to help you manage your social networks, the control panel reveals how many minutes you spent on the Facebook application on that device each day during the past week and on average.
You can set a daily limit and receive a reminder to stop after so many minutes each day, as well as shortcuts to notification settings, news and friend requests. Those last two shortcuts are new, but otherwise, the function works in the same way as when the preview was made. You can access it by going to the More tab of Facebook -> Settings and privacy -> Your time on Facebook.
TechCrunch first released the news that Facebook was working on the show in June. Facebook gave an explanation for the delayed access to the function, and the spokesmen told me: "Normally, the functions are developed slowly so that we can detect errors and solve them quickly. We slow down the deployment of tools after launch so that our teams can correct some errors before expanding globally, "and that" the tools will continue to be implemented in the coming weeks. "The social consultant Matt Navarra had The tool reached more users today.
With the release of similar tools as part of the latest versions of iOS and Android, in addition to the deployment of the similar tab of Your Activity on Instagram last week, digital wellness features are becoming Available for a wide range of smartphone users The question is whether the simple fact of burying these functions in the Settings menus is enough for people to switch to healthier behavior.
The Facebook and Instagram versions are particularly edentulous, there are no options that force him to alleviate his So, just a quick daily limit notification to discard. The iOS 12 Screen Time at least delivers a weekly usage report by default, so the feature finds you even if you do not search for it. And Android's new digital wellness control panel is by far the most powerful and gray application icon that requires you to enter your configuration to unlock it once you reach your daily limit. Facebook does not necessarily have to impose stricter restrictions on us, but at least it must provide more convincing optional tools so that we can actually put our phones and see the real world.
The Facebook control panel is not integrated with Instagram. , which would give people a more holistic sense of their activity in social networks. You will not have your Facebook desktop computer or time on secondary mobile devices, like the tablets tabbed here either.
But the biggest flaw is still that Your Time on Facebook deals in the same way. This seems to ignore the research that Facebook itself has presented on digital well-being in social networks, as well as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments about what constitutes healthy and unhealthy behavior. Zuckerberg said the first-quarter earnings of 2018 call "the wellness research we've done … suggests that when people use the Internet to interact with other people and establish relationships, this correlates with all the positive measures of well-being that you I would expect, as long-term health and happiness, to feel more connected and less alone, while only passively consuming content is not necessarily positive in those dimensions. "
However, one can not distinguish the active and passive presence of Facebook apart from the control panel. There is no way to see a breakdown of how much time you spend navigating the News, viewing Stories or exploring photos in profiles instead of creating posts or comments, sending messages or interacting in Groups. That segmentation would give users a much clearer view of where they are spending or losing hours, and what they could do to make their use healthier. Hopefully, over time, Facebook will give the board more nuances so that we can track not only time, but also time well spent.