Instagram wants to help people from self-harm with new policies

Social media is more dangerous than we think it is. Though it has changed the way we interact with the world, excessive use might lead to self-harm. And, these effects on one's psyches shouldn't be ignored - especially when it comes to people harming themselves.

In an attempt to curb these issues, Instagram, the popular photo-sharing platform, is taking essential steps that might help those affected by the aforementioned issues. The platform has four key elements to its latest plan, and two of them are related to the content:

• Graphic imagery of self-harm will no longer be allowed.
• Non-graphic self-harm content will not appear in search, hashtags, or the explore tab.

The first one is no brainer. Even if the graphic content met the community guidelines, it will be taken down when reported as it can encourage self-harm or suicide. The second point is more interesting. While the graphic content won't appear in the search result, Instagram is making clear that it won't remove the content from the platform.

Instagram is also said to be working on a new feature that will also help users get rid of the addiction to social media. Dubbed "activity dashboard" the feature was seen earlier in 2018 in app's code but has now started rolling out for users across the globe.

The feature shows how much time a user is spending on Instagram during a span of a week. And if the users find the size of bars on the usage getting bigger, the app will notify them to do something about it.