Instagram Debuts ‘Nighttime Nudges’ to Tell Teens to Go to Bed

Instagram has launched ‘nighttime nudges’, a feature aimed at encouraging teens to log off late at night. This initiative is part of Meta’s broader strategy to offer teens and their parents tools for managing time spent on their apps, said the company in an email to iPhone in Canada.

The ‘nighttime nudges’ will activate when teens spend over 10 minutes on Instagram in areas such as Reels or Direct Messages, particularly between 10 pm and 4 am. These nudges will remind users of the late hour and suggest closing the app.

In addition to ‘nighttime nudges’, Instagram has introduced several other features to support this plan. These include parental supervision options allowing parents to set daily time limits or scheduled breaks, ‘Take a Break’ reminders for teens to take regular pauses from the app, and ‘Quiet Mode’, which mutes notifications and sends auto-replies, signaling the user’s unavailability during specific times like study hours or at night.

“We want teens to leave Instagram feeling like the time they spend on the app is meaningful and intentional. It’s part of the reason we’ve developed so many tools to support this,” said a Meta spokesperson in an email.

Last week, Meta launched new protections for teens on Facebook and Instagram as well.

Social media apps can be highly addicting and sometimes when you fall down that rabbit hole at night, there’s no going back. Hopefully this feature can remind you to come back to real life, especially for teenagers.