• by Colin Kirkland , January 18, 2024

Days after Meta announced new safety features on Instagram, the social-media platform is introducing a new “nighttime nudges” feature that pops up on teens’ phone screens after they have spent more than 10 minutes on Reels or Direct Messages late at night.

The late-night reminder prompts will remind teens of the time and encourage them to shut the app down and go to sleep.

Prompts will vary, with messages like “Time for a break?” followed by “It's getting late. Consider closing Instagram for the night.”

Nudges, which will begin appearing after 10 PM, cannot be turned off by teen users.

However, teens can still decline to comply with the suggestion and continue using Instagram for as long as they want.

Nighttime nudges resemble TikTok's own limited-usage feature, which reminds users to close the app and go to sleep, and build off of Meta’s “Take a Break” feature, as well as “Quiet Mode,” which helps teens mute notifications and let their friends know that they won’t be available for a specific amount of time.

With mounting regulatory pressures from the European Union, the U.S. Senate and lawsuits issued by 40 states with regard to negative mental-health impacts from its family of apps, Meta is attempting to make Instagram and Facebook safer for younger users.

Last week, the tech giant announced new protective tools and resources focused on limiting the types of content that teens see, with more restrictive content control settings, expanded content restrictions related to self-harm, and prompts linked to privacy settings.

On Wednesday of this week, internal Meta documents about child safety were unsealed because of a lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Department of Justice against the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, revealing that Meta intentionally marketed its platforms to children despite hard knowledge that the apps facilitated inappropriate relationships between adults and minors.