Instagram ‘Quiet Mode’ Announced, App Updated With Parental Supervision Tools, More

Instagram's Quiet Mode will be available in Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK starting today.

Written by Sucharita Ganguly, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 20 January 2023 14:51 IST

Instagram ‘Quiet Mode’ Announced, App Updated With Parental Supervision Tools, More

Photo Credit: Meta

Instagram now allows users to choose to hide multiple pieces of content in Explore

Highlights

Instagram said this will help users “set boundaries”
The app already features a daily usage time tracker
The parental control tools are intended to manage recommendations

Instagram has announced a new feature called Quiet Mode “to help people focus and to encourage people to set boundaries with their friends and followers.” According to the company, the feature aims to ease users' anxiety about spending time away from the app by silencing incoming alerts, auto-replying to direct messages (DMs), and setting an account's status to 'In Quiet Mode' to notify followers that the user is not currently active on the app. Even though the feature is available for everyone, the feature is specially targeted to its teenage users.

In a blog post explaining the new features, Instagram parent Meta, said that teens had informed the company that they sometimes "wanted to take time for themselves and might be looking for more ways to focus at night, while studying and during school.” The new Quiet Mode is aimed at encouraging people to spend less time on the app, and the company says that it will urge teenage users to enable Quiet Mode during the night through prompts on the app.

Meta says that it has developed this feature “to help people focus and to encourage people to set boundaries with their friends and followers" Turning it on will silence all notifications, while your profile's activity status will change to let people know that you are in Quiet Mode. Instagram will also send an auto-reply when someone sends you a DM, according to the company.

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In the latest blog post, Instagram has also introduced newer ways to control recommendations and updated its Parental Supervision Tools. Users can now choose to hide several pieces of content in Explore at one time. Users can also “add a word or list of words, emojis or hashtags that you want to avoid.”

“Recently, we added the ability for parents to see their teen's Instagram settings, including privacy and account settings. If their teen updates a setting, parents will receive a notification so they can talk to their teen about the change. Parents can now also view accounts their teen has blocked,” the post added.

Quiet Mode is available to all users in Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the US starting today, and will be introduced in other regions soon.

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Nick Clegg, Meta President, Global Affairs tweeted, "We'll prompt teenage users to turn on ‘Quiet Mode' - teens have told us they're looking for more ways to focus while studying, during school and at night. It's available today for all users in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and more countries soon."

Instagram has also attempted to develop features to help users manage their time before. The app already includes a feature that allows users to know, track, and control their daily time spent on the app by sending them alerts.

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The app also offers a feature that allows you to set up "take a break" prompts when specific app sessions go over a certain amount of time, as well as tools to pause, snooze, restrict, and unfollow pages, groups, and people to help reduce interaction with addictive or otherwise irrelevant posts.

Is 2023 the year when you should finally buy a foldable phone? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Instagram, Meta

Sucharita Ganguly

Email Sucharita Ganguly

Sucharita is a writer with Gadgets 360 and is mostly found playing with her cat in her free time. She has previously worked at breaking news desks across organizations. Powered by coffee, The Beatles, Bowie, and her newfound love for BTS, she aims to work towards contributing to a better media environment for women and queer folk. More