Instagram night-time nudge tells teenagers to go to bed

INSTAGRAM will tell teenagers to go to bed if they are using the app for long periods late at night, amid concerns that social media means adolescents are not getting enough sleep.

An update to the app will encourage under-18s to take a break if they have been scrolling through videos or messages for more than 10 minutes.

The feature, which will be turned on by default, will turn on after 10pm. A message takes over the screen saying: “Time for a break?” adding: “It’s getting late. Consider closing Instagram for the night.”

Teenagers will not be able to stop the message, called a “night-time nudge”, from popping up, but they will be able to dismiss it and keep using the app.

Instagram is used by almost nine in 10 children aged between 16 to 17-yearolds and half of 12 to 15-year-olds, according to Ofcom.

“We want teens to leave Instagram feeling like the time they spend on the app is meaningful and intentional, and we know sleep is particularly important for young people,” it said.

Researchers have linked heavy social media use at night to a lack of sleep, leading to poor performance at school, mental health issues and obesity.

The majority of teenagers do not get enough sleep, which some researchers have linked to a fear of missing out on seeing posts and frequently receiving notifications in the middle of the night.

The Instagram alerts are specific to features that are seen as the most time-consuming, including Reels, which shows an infinite feed of short videos, and direct messages.

The app, owned by Facebook parent Meta, has added features in recent years to help users become less attached to it.

Parental controls now let adults set time limits or enforce breaks, while the app also has an optional “take a break” feature which suggests that users try other activities such as listening to music or completing a task at set intervals such as every 20 minutes.

The new feature comes as Meta battles a lawsuit from 33 US states over claims that it hooks children to Instagram and that the app has worsened a teenage mental health crisis.

The lawsuit, filed last year, claims that the company seeks to maximise the time that teenagers spend on the app with “psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended use” of Instagram and Facebook.

Meta has challenged the claims, pointing to features it has introduced to give users control over how long they spend on the apps.