How Instagram's quiet mode can help you overcome social media burnout

It has become much more common over the last decade to never go anywhere without your phone -- and not just to the store or to the movies. I'm guilty of carrying my phone with me throughout the day as I go from room to room in my house. What if I miss a text? What if that email I've been waiting to receive for over a week finally lands in my inbox? What if someone tweets something funny that I immediately have to send to the group chat?

Phones have developed features to help users temporarily escape the endless scrolling of their social media feeds and other apps. Apple's Do Not Disturb feature literally prompts you to focus on finishing that article you started writing five minutes ago, for example, instead of checking TikTok just one more time in case a new trend suddenly dropped.

For those who want to free themselves from the notifications from one app in particular -- just for a little while -- don't always have an easy option. Instagram's Quiet Mode, however, might change at least some of your social media habits for the better.

Silence Instagram notifications with quiet mode

Instagram notifications are relentless. Especially if you're in a group message thread or have notifications turned on for multiple accounts who post regularly. Even if you try to ignore them, if you're anything like me and keep your phone sitting near you as you're working, it's easy to get distracted and worry you might miss a notification.

Enter Quiet Mode -- an in-Instagram setting that alows users to customize specific notification preferences. If you're getting overwhelmed with notifications or know you need to spend the next hour focusing on an important task (how's that article coming along?), you can easily activate Quiet Mode. It's exactly what it sounds like.

How to activate quiet mode on Instagram

Go to your profile, then to the three horizontal lines on the top right. Select Notifications > Quiet mode. Here, you can customize when you want your notifications turned off. Toggle quiet mode to On and quickly customize your experience.

While Quiet Mode is on, Instagram will auto-reply and set your status as "in quiet mode" so anyone trying to reach you will know you'll get back to them as soon as possible.

You can set both a time schedule and certain days you want Quiet Mode to automatically turn on and off. This makes it so you can choose these settings once and only have to adjust them if you want to. You don't have to manually turn Instagram notifications off every time you need a break.

These settings make it easy to, for example, turn Instagram notifications off in the evenings or on weekends if these are good blocks of time for you to step away from the app.

It's OK to take a break. Instagram does give you the option to, even if the app doesn't make it easy to find without instructions.