How to Use Facebook or Instagram's Activity Dashboard in a Few Simple Steps

If you’ve ever found yourself mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook Instagram feeds only to catch yourself and fret over just how much of your life you’ve wasted on the social media platforms, you’re far from alone. However, there may be a solution.

Facebook announced this week that it will soon be rolling out new tools to help people manage their time on both Facebook and Instagram, and it sounds like the tools could be legitimately useful if you find yourself procrastinating on the sites fairly often.

In a press release Wednesday, Ameet Ranadive, Product Management Director at Instagram, and David Ginsberg, Director of Research at Facebook, laid out the new tools designed manage your time on both social platforms. They reportedly collaborated with “leading mental health experts and organizations” as well as academics, and Facebook used its own research and community feedback to develop the tools.

In navigating the new feature on both platforms, Inverse has you covered with a step-by-step guide.

“Your Activity” on Instagram and “Your Time on Facebook” Features

In exploring the new feature, the first thing you should do is navigate to Facebook or Instagram’s settings page on either app. It’ll look a little different depending on which app you’re on and whether you’re on mobile or a desktop.

The next step is to navigate to either “Your Activity” if you’re on Instagram or “Your Time on Facebook.” Both should display your average time spent on the respective apps on your device. If you want to see the total time for a particular day, just tap the corresponding bar.

Set Daily Reminders on Facebook or Instagram

Now that you’ve likely become thoroughly horrified by just how much time you spend on Facebook or Instagram on any given day, Facebook has some options to help you curb your social media habit.

Below the dashboard, there’s a way to set a daily reminder so you can be alerted when you’ve reached the maximum amount of time you’d like to spend on either app for that day. But there’s a catch: It can be changed or canceled at any time. That means you alone have the power to curb your social media time.

Pause Those Pesky Facebook and Instagram Notifications

If you don’t need to limit your time spent on Instagram or Facebook all the time, there’s a way to snooze your push notifications while using the apps. All you have to do is tap on “Notification Settings” and navigate to the “Mute Push Notifications” setting. That setting will limit the Facebook or Instagram notifications for a specific period of time.

These new time management tools are supposed to roll out on both Facebook and Instagram soon to all users. Inverse reached out to Facebook for more specifics on when the features will be available worldwide, but did not immediately receive a response.