Facebook and Instagram are introducing a new dashboard to tell you how long you’ve spent inside their apps, along with tools for setting daily limits and temporarily muting your push notifications. The new set of features, called “Your time on Facebook” and “Your activity” on Instagram, are designed to address concerns that addictive feedback loops built into social apps have been detrimental to users’ well-being.
The features will roll out to all users globally within the next couple weeks, save for 1 percent of users who are being held back to allow for comparative testing with the main group, the company said. The move has been expected since last month when screenshots of the features leaked.
To find the new features on Facebook, tap the button with three vertical lines — also known as the hamburger menu — in the bottom-right corner of the app. Scroll down to “Your time on Facebook” and tap. On Instagram, you’ll find “Your activity” inside the settings menu, which you access by tapping the gear icon on your profile.
The dashboard shows you a bar chart of the time you have spent in each app over the past seven days. (Tap on any bar to see the exact amount.) From there, you can choose how much time you wish to spend inside the Facebook and Instagram apps, in five-minute increments.
Once you’ve reached that time, the app will send you a reminder that you’ve hit your daily limit, although you can continue to browse if you like. You can also manage your notification settings from the dashboard, including a new feature that will let you mute them for up to eight hours.
Facebook and other tech companies have faced intense criticism over the past year for how aggressively they court their users’ attention throughout the day. In December, citing internal and academic research, Facebook acknowledged that passive consumption of the News Feed could make people feel bad. Earlier this year, Google and Apple added system-level features to Android and iOS, respectively, to help people understand how much time they spend in apps and to restrict that time, if they like.
“It’s really important for people that use Instagram and Facebook to feel like the time that they spend with us is time well spent.”
“We want these tools to be widely available to the whole community, and to anyone that would benefit from using them,” said Ameet Ranadive, who leads a team at Instagram devoted to users’ well-being. “It’s really important for people that use Instagram and Facebook to feel like the time that they spend with us is time well spent. That’s the whole purpose of this release.”
Ranadive said the company felt compelled to make the dashboard available despite the risk that it could lead to further decreased usage of Facebook and Instagram.
“We want to empower people to make intentional decisions about how much time they spend, and how they want to engage with the app,” he said. “There may be some trade-off with other metrics for the company. That’s a trade-off that we’re willing to live with. In the long run this is something that’s important for the community, and something we want to invest in.”
More features could come to the activity sections of Facebook and Instagram as the company studies how they are used and what else users would like to see there, Ranadive said.
If your brand has a business Facebook page, you'll want to invest time understanding your Insights dashboard.
It holds important data that helps you understand how your page is performing and is key to growing your page.
Features like weekly insight summaries and competitive data on other business pages make Facebook Insights a powerful tool that every marketer should leverage.
Let's dive into what Facebook Insights is, how to access it, and how to interpret the metrics it tracks.
What is Facebook Insights?
Facebook Insights is an analytics dashboard where you can track user behavior and post performance on your Facebook business page. In addition to providing key metrics like page views and post reach for paid and organic posts, the platform also recommends competitor pages to watch and track.
Facebook Page Insights vs. Facebook Audience Insights
Despite having similar names, Facebook Insights and Facebook Audience Insights have completely different functions.
Facebook Insights visualizes incoming data from your business page so you can learn how users are behaving on your page, what content they're engaging with, and how your page matches up to competitors.
Facebook Audience Insights, on the other hand, is used for ad campaigns and helps marketers understand Facebook audiences in general (which can also include those who follow your page).
The platform includes information on user demographics, such as location and relationship status as well as user behavior, including average ad clicks and comments.
Where is Facebook Insights?
To access Facebook Insights, you'll need to have a business page. Then, follow the steps below:
Once you log into Facebook, head to your business page. Then, click on "Insights," located on the sidebar to the left of the page.
You'll land on the "Overview" page which features a dashboard with three main categories. The first is your page summary, which shows key metrics from the last seven days. However, you can also view data from today, yesterday, and the last 28 days.
Once you scroll down, you'll see insights on your most recent posts.
The last section features insights from your competitors. In this section, Facebook can recommend pages to watch, but you can also customize which brands' performance you track by clicking "Add Pages."
To dive deeper into these metrics, you can click each category listed on the sidebar to the left of the dashboard.
How to Use the Facebook Insights API
The Facebook Insights API, also known as the Ads Insights API, allows you to fetch ad data to track your ad performance. The API is particularly useful because it allows marketers to pull the exact data they want to track, no matter how granular.
To fetch the data from the API, you must determine what data you want to pull and create an access token for that ad, so that only your team can access that information. You'll then need to determine where to import that data, like Google Sheets or HubSpot's ads software within the Marketing Hub.
It allows you to pull your Insights API into the platform and match it against with data already in the CRM. This will provide a better understanding of the customer journey and give you a 360-degree view of how your ads are performing.
How to Export Facebook Insights Data
Start on your dashboard overview. On the top right corner of your "Page Summary," you'll see "Export Data."
A window will pop up. From there, you'll narrow down what data to export, the data range, file format and layout.
Click "Export Data" and you're all set.
Top Facebook Insights Metrics
Your Facebook Insights dashboard displays top metrics about your business page. On any given day, you can get a snapshot of your page's performance and adjust your strategy accordingly. Top metrics include:
- Page views – The number of times your page has been viewed by Facebook and non-Facebook users.
- Page likes – How many Facebook users like your business page.
- Actions on page – How many actions users take on your business page, such as to click on a website link or ask for directions to your store.
- Post reach – The number of users on Facebook who saw your post.
- Post engagement – How many people liked, shared, reacted, or commented on your post.
You also have video insights, which can tell you how your videos are performing. Key metrics include:
- Minutes viewed – The total amount of time users have spent watching your videos.
- Video views – The number of users who watched your video for three seconds or more.
- Audience retention – How long you maintained your video's audience in a video.
For tips on how to interpret your video insights, jump to this section.
How to Interpret Facebook Insights
Before you start analyzing your data, make sure you know what questions you want answered. This will help you narrow down which key metrics to focus on.
Once you know that, start looking through the data to identify patterns.
For instance, let's say you notice that your how-to posts get shared at a much higher rate than your other content.This may indicate that this type of content resonates more with your audience and adds value to them and their community. As such, you may want to double down on these posts if your goal is to get higher engagement.
Analyzing the data is one thing, but what's more important is what you do next. As you notice trends, take note of them and conduct experiments to learn more about what your audience wants. This will help you learn more about your audience and develop content that meets their needs.
If your team wants to focus on video insights, scroll down to the "Videos" tab on the left sidebar and click on it. Once there, you'll see your top video metrics, such as watch time and top video performers.
For tips on how to understand your video insights, watch the video below. It dives into how to navigate your video insights dashboard and what your insights can tell you broken down by performance, loyalty, audience, and retention.
Your Facebook Insights dashboard holds so much information about your page's performance and your audience. If you leverage that data, you can create better content and generate more revenue for your brand.