Need to take a break

Social network Instagram has launched a previously announced tool that will send notifications to users to take a break from browsing the feed. This was announced in a letter from the service's chief of administration, Adam Mosseri, posted on Instagram's official blog on Tuesday.

"It's important to me that people enjoy their time on Instagram, so today we're launching Take A Break to enable people to make informed decisions about how they spend their time on the social network Instagram." If a user scrolls through the feed for a certain amount of time, a notification will tell them that it's time to take a break and rest.

Adam Mosseri, head of the social network, also noted that the use of the feature will be promoted separately to the teenage audience. To make teens aware of the new tool, they will be shown notifications prompting them to turn on time reminders.

The innovation will go live in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia from December 7, with the rest of the countries becoming available by early next year.

Instagram will additionally start testing a feature that will give users the ability to delete a large volume of photos or videos, as well as comments and likes, all at once. It is expected that everyone will be able to try out the new option in January.