Facebook understands how addictive social media can be. The hours of the day simply pale into insignificance as you scroll through your News Feed, comment on friends’ posts, reply to comments made to your comments, munch of videos which may actually be of no use in the larger scheme of things and perhaps even play a few games. The company is now adding a new option called Quiet Mode to the app, which will allow users to control how much time they spend on the social network. The update is rolling out for iPhone users now and will arrive on Facebook for Android in May.
You will be able to set a Quiet Mode schedule and that will also turn off notifications for new messages and more on the app. It also illustrates better exactly how much time you have spent on Facebook in the past few hours and doing exactly what. You can no longer live in denial about watching unnecessary videos (and slowing down the internet for the rest of us in the process). You will get the option to either manually set the Quiet Mode window or predefine certain hours of the day for automatic impact.
“We added Quiet Mode, which mutes most push notifications, and if you try to open Facebook while in Quiet Mode, you’ll be reminded that you set this time aside to limit your time in the app,” says Kang-Xing Jin, Head of Health at Facebook. The company is also expected to add extended statistics in terms of your usage patterns on Facebook during the day and during the night time, as well as weekly stats.
Quiet Mode isn’t new though, and it builds on the time management tools that Facebook had launched a couple of years ago. Do remember though, Quiet Mode for Facebook is a phased rollout and not everyone will get it immediately.