Instagram rolls out 'quiet mode' for when users want to focus

Instagram announced a new feature called "quiet mode," which aims to help users focus and set boundaries with friends and followers.

Instagram on Thursday announced a new feature called "quiet mode," which aims to help users focus and set boundaries with friends and followers.

When the option is enabled, all notifications will be paused and the profile's activity status will change to 'In quiet mode." If someone sends a direct message during this time, Instagram will automatically send an auto-reply notifying the sender that "quiet mode" is activated.

While the feature applies to all users, Instagram appears to be focusing on teens. Instagram is pitching it as a tool to help with studying and prompting teens to turn on the feature "when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night."

The tool will roll out to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and plans to add it to more countries in the future.

The tool is the latest example of Instagram offering users more ways to manage their usage, after years of scrutiny over how much time people -- and especially teens -- spend on various social media applications, and the harms it can pose to their mental health.

"These updates are part of our ongoing work to ensure people have experiences that work for them, and that they have more control over the time they spend online and the types of content they see," the company said in a blog post.

As part of that effort, the platform is also introducing features to give users more control over what shows up in their Explore feed. For example, it's now possible to mark content with a "Not Interested" label to prevent similar content from showing up in the future. Instagram is also introducing an option to block words or lists of words, emojis or hashtags, such as #fitness or #recipes, from being recommended in the Explore feed.