It has been for a long time that online services, including social media, rely on the number of users and users' time spent on their services as the milestone of success.
The math goes like this: the better the service, the more the users. Add that to the time spent by users, a high number should translate to happier advertisers and a wider smile on the investors' faces.
But what happens when things go beyond the scale?
This is where the ‘digital wellbeing’ is born.
The term is used by health professionals, researchers and device manufacturers to describe the concept that when humans interact with technology, the experience should support their mental and/or physical health in a measurable way.
The movement is meant to limit users' times spent on their devices so they can focus on other things in life. With the urge from many, tech titans began delivering their own 'digital wellbeing' to limit their users' activities on their devices/apps. This started to happen around 2018.
And this time, the digital wellbeing movement is having one unlikely member: Facebook.
The social giant Facebook and its properties are known to focus on keeping users glued to their services no matter what. But the concept of digital wellbeing has somehow permeated so far that even Facebook is trying to get users to stop using Facebook.
On April 9, 2020, the company announced a feature called ‘Quiet Mode’. What it does, is limiting Facebook notifications and the time users spend on the app.
Facebook says the feature "mutes most push notifications", and that if users open Facebook while it’s activated, "you’ll be reminded that you set this time aside to limit your time in the app."
As of the announcement, Facebook is gradually rolling out the feature to all of its users.
Once available, this Quiet Mode can be enabled by heading to the Facebook settings, on the 'Your Time on Facebook'.
When activated, users will see how much time they have remaining, and they can even schedule the feature to activate during specific hours of the day.
For all this time, Facebook has been trying to get users to spend more of their time on its products. But the novel 'COVID-19' coronavirus not only changed the way employees of Facebook work, as the pandemic also made shifts in how people around the world spend their lives mostly indoors.
Facebook said that "whether it’s to help you focus on your family and friends, sleep without distraction or manage how you spend your time at home, we have tools that can help you find the right balance for how you use Facebook."
Besides the Quiet Mode, Facebook has also added shortcuts to Notification Settings and News Feed Preferences, so users can make the most of their time on Facebook by controlling the type of posts they want to see in the News Feed, as well as the updates they want to receive.
These things are not Facebook at all, considering that the company has been built to profit from user addiction.
But nevertheless, Facebook is a social media network with the largest reach and the most influence. With more than 2 billion users, Facebook is nothing without users. This is why the moves that aim to take care of its users should be appreciated.