Instagram yesterday announced a new mute feature called “silent mode” to help users who want to focus more on other activities or set online boundaries with their friends and followers.

In “silent mode”, all notifications are stopped and the profile’s activity status changes to “silent mode”. If someone sends a direct message to a user who has selected Quiet Mode, Instagram will send an automatic reply informing the sender that Quiet Mode is on.

While this option will be available to all users, Instagram seems to be targeting teens. Instagram is touting the new feature as a tutorial and encouraging teens to enable the feature “when they spend a certain amount of time on Instagram late at night.”

The tool will initially launch in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and will gradually become available in other countries.

Instagram has begun offering more ways to manage and use after years of research into the time users (and especially teenagers) spend on various social media platforms and the impact on their mental health.

“These updates are part of our efforts to ensure that people have an experience that suits them and that they can better control the time they spend online and the type of content they view,” the company said in a statement. on your blog.

New control options

As part of the same effort, the platform is introducing features that give users more control over what content appears in the feed. For example, they can now select the “I’m not interested” tag to prevent similar content from appearing in the future. Instagram allows you to block words or lists of words, emoji or hashtags. so that such content is not recommended in the feed.

Instagram is also updating its parental controls so that when a teenager changes a setting, parents will be notified and will also be able to see the accounts their child has blocked.

In a series of congressional hearings in 2021, the executives of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat were asked tough questions about the risk of exposing young users to harmful content that harms their mental health and body image. At the same time, concerns were expressed about omissions in parental controls.

The social media giants have promised to make a change, and Instagram has made a few changes: It has created an education hub for parents with resources, tips, and expert articles on user safety.

He also launched a tool that allows parents to see how much time their kids spend on Instagram and set time limits.