Feature Under Development To Track How Much Time You Spend On Facebook

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An unreleased feature for Facebook titled “Your Time on Facebook” will allow you to keep track of how much time you spend on Facebook in order to rein in social media overuse.

Social Media

While social media has been around for quite some time at this point, it has become an increasingly present part of many people’s lives. There’s a certain addictiveness to staying clued in to your friends lives and sharing what’s important to you on an online platform. From important announcements to funny memes, there is a wealth of content on social media platforms – and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing.

Before we all had a computer in our pockets, it was much less common to be connected 24/7. With programs like the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat Apps, however, many people are finding it increasingly difficult to disconnect from an online presence – and there is a growing population of people that flat out don’t want to.

However, more and more attention has been shed on the influence of social media in our lives as these giant service become more and more ingrained in our culture, and for one reason or another you might want to track how much time you spend on Facebook in order to determine whether your social media habit is more of an addiction than it is a quality pastime.

The unreleased “Your Time on Facebook” feature is in development, and is intended to keep users clued in to the time they spend on the site – and for many of us, the results may be surprising.

Your Time On Facebook

The”Your Time On Facebook” feature was initially spotted by engineer Jane Manchun Wong, and, as the name suggests, tracks how much time you spend on Facebook. The initial report comes via TechCrunch, and reportedly shows your average daily usage.

The existence of this feature may be a sign that big technology companies are taking steps to promote a healthier relationship with our devices and with social media services. While these companies primarily make their money from people engaging with the app, they are starting to recognize that people are staying glued to their phones and that the damage that these addictions can do to our society as a whole are pretty significant.

Jane Manchun Wong has a history of uncovering unreleased features, and Your Time On Facebook is just the latest of a string of discoveries found over the course of their career. While digging in the code on Facebook’s Android App, Wong discovered the beginnings of the new feature that will help show you how much time you spend on Facebook.

As mentioned above, “Your Time On Facebook” shows how much time you’ve spend on the app each day for the past seven days, as well as a metric that gives you the average daily time spent. One cool feature that is being included as well is the ability to set a daily time-limit and be alerted once you’ve hit it, allowing people to avoid letting their social media usage run away from them.

Many are unaware of just how much time checking Facebook regularly throughout the day can add up to, and this little reminder that allows users to curb potentially addictive behavior will probably allow many more people to have a healthier relationship with their computers and phones and with social media in general.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Facebook confirmed that the ability to track how much time you spend on Facebook was in development, saying “We’re always working on new ways to help make sure people’s time on Facebook is time well spent.” The company did not give any indication as to when we would see the feature rollout, however, but the fact that the code is present in the app already makes us think that it may be released in the near future.

The release of “Your Time On Facebook” follows statements from CEO Mark Zuckerberg back in January that the company wanted to shift the focus away from news. This shift had resulted in users spending 50 million fewer hours on Facebook, and he emphasized the company’s goal that they would like their users to form “meaningful connections” on Facebook rather than promoting a social media addiction.

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