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Social media giant Instagram will now tell users to take a break if they've spent too long on their app.

The 'take-a-break' feature is meant to encourage users to take a step back from the platform, by giving them reminders when they've spent a certain period of time on it.

It'll also offer tips on what people can do during their break, like taking a few deep breaths, writing down what they're thinking, listening to their favourite song, or completing something on their to-do list.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced the launch of the feature on a blog post, after originally tweeting about it back in November.

The feature launched on Tuesday in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

"If you opt in, it encourages you to take a break from Instagram after you spend a certain amount of time on the app - 10, 20, or 30 minutes," said Mr Mosseri.

"If someone has been scrolling for a certain amount of time, we'll ask them to take a break from Instagram and suggest that they set reminders to take more breaks in the future," Mr Mosseri wrote.

Teenage users will get notifications to turn on break reminders, he said, adding the feature would also show them tips from experts to "help them reflect and reset".

Instagram also said it will launch a new tool for parents in March 2022.

The tool will let them see how much time their child is spending on Instagram and set time limits for the app.

Time limits already exist on Instagram - users can voluntarily set a time limit per day and receive a notification when that limit is hit.

The feature comes after Facebook - which owns Instagram - was heavily criticised for hiding research it has done about how social media affects young people.

Some of the research they found showed that young people blamed Instagram for increased levels of anxiety and depression.

Video sharing platform TikTok first introduced its screen time management feature in April 2019, allowing people to choose how long they spend on the app each day.

Last year, the app took things one step further, introducing what it called 'Screen Time Management in Feed'. This gives users visual prompts to remind them to think about how much time they're spending on it and it also encourages them to take time out.

TikTok also introduced its Family Safety Mode feature in 2020 which links a parent's TikTok account to their teenage child's. As part of the feature, parents can control how long their children are on the app each day.

YouTube also has a similar feature, which prompts users with a visual reminder once they've spent a certain amount of time on the app. Once they've enabled the feature, people are able to set how often they want the reminders to show up.

They can also check how long they watched videos on YouTube for during a day, over a week and they can also see what their daily average watch time is.

Let us know what you think about the feature in the comments below...