Annoyed with certain friends on Facebook lately? Well, now you can temporarily mute them.
With "Snooze," you can hide friends, pages, or groups from appearing on your News Feed for 30 days. Starting today, access the Snooze option by clicking on the "…" icon found on the top-right of any Facebook post.
"The people, Pages, and groups you snooze will not be notified," the company said in a blog post. "You will be notified before the Snooze period is about to end and the setting can also be reversed at any time."
Facebook said users have been calling for a Snooze option for some time; it's hoping the new feature will create a more positive user experience, joking in a video that Snooze can screen out annoying cat videos from your friend. Rival Twitter has had a mute features since 2014.
Snooze comes as Facebook is facing some very serious questions about its effect on society and public discourse. In recent weeks, two former company executives have expressed concern over the social network's impact on children's brains. One of the former executives, Chamath Palihapitiya, even said social media is ruining society.
"People need to hard break from some of these tools," he said. "The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works."
Facebook pushed back, saying it's become a socially conscious company in recent years. But on Friday, Facebook researchers acknowledged that they too think about the issue. "With people spending more time on social media, many rightly wonder whether that time is good for us," Facebook's director of research, David Ginsberg, wrote in a separate blog post.
Past research has indicated smartphones and social media may increase feelings of loneliness and depression, while other studies have shown the technology is merely used by people to pass the time, he said.
The company's own research has found social media certainly has pros and cons. When people passively consume information—like reading the posts over Facebook News Feed, but never interacting with them— they can feel worse. Why this can happen isn't clear, but researchers think that reading about others online may compel you to negatively compare your life to theirs, Ginsberg wrote.
The good news is that when people actively interact with their friends on social media, like sharing posts, or making comments, they feel better about themselves.
Facebook's new Snooze option will probably help users in screening out content they don't like, in favor for posts they may actually interact with. "We're working to make Facebook more about social interaction and less about spending time," Ginsberg added.