Instagram Launches New ‘Night Time Nudges’ to Get Teens to Shut it Down for the Night

Building on its latest round of teen safety features, Instagram has today announced new “night time nudges”, which will prompt users to turn their damn phone off when they’re using it late at night.

As per Instagram:

“Sleep is important, particularly for young people, so we’re launching new nighttime nudges that will show up when teens have spent more than 10 minutes on Instagram in places like Reels or Direct Messages late at night. They’ll remind teens that it’s late, and encourage them to close the app.”

As you can see in the above example, the messaging is pretty basic, essentially the digital equivalent of a parent knocking on your bedroom door and telling you to shut it down for the night.

Which all parents of teens have had to do at some stage. Mobile addiction is real, and no matter how hard you try, at some point, your child is going to sneak their phone into their room, in order to keep messaging that one friend.

As such, this could be helpful, though I imagine that most kids will just ignore it and continue on.

So it’s no substitute for the old “I will take that thing from you if you can’t control yourself”, but it’s another element in Instagram’s broader teen safety and regulation push.