Imagine you’re a PM at Meta. How would you make users feel less guilty about using Instagram while also increasing revenue?

Let's start by breaking down the problem at hand:

Make users "feel less guilty about using the product" + "increase revenue"

Clarifying questions: 

• Guilt: What is guilt? From my viewpoint, I have observed people wanting to reduce excessive use of social media platforms like Instagram because it leads to increased screen time, less productivity, potential health issues, seclusion, etc. If these people consciously recognize this need and repeat the same patterns, the results could lead to ‘GUILT’. So, can we assume, Guilt = Screen Time?  

Assume→YES.

• Do we want to target any specific user persona? (Maybe based on age, gender, etc.?)

• There are multiple ways to increase revenue (for instance, through e-commerce, increasing Ads margins, etc.). Are we focusing on methodologies that would ‘reduce guilt’ and increase revenue simultaneously? 

- Do we need to stick to any timeline? 

Assume→ No, up to you.

- Do we have any resource constraints? 

Assume → No.

- Are we targeting any specific geographies? 

Assume→ No.

 

Less guilt: This can be achieved by actually reducing the screentime, or tweaking the content suggestion and adding more meaningful content suggestions to the users’ feed.

Increasing revenue: Instagram’s sources of revenue are: Ads and e-commerce. Both of these rely on user engagement. Instagram uses sophisticated algorithms that learn and re-learn user’s behavior, and choices, and produce relevant content. More engagement, more chances of revenue. 

 

Our goal is to help users break out of excessive usage patterns and suggest meaningful content and while doing so, also maintain/increase engagement or revenue opportunities.

 

Who are the Users:

Instagram’s users can be divided broadly into these categories: 

Types of users: 

• Individual users

    - Power users 

    - Casual users

    - Passive Users

• Businesses
• Content Creators

From the definition of Guilt mentioned above, it makes sense for us to focus on power users who have more propensity to get ‘addicted’ to the platform. 

User Persona: 

• Demography - 18-25 years
• Not working/Early stage job | Have time at hand | Have career aspirations
• Greatly Influenced by social media.
• 3-5 hours of daily Instagram usage.

Pain points: 

(What results in guilt)

• Users consciously recognize the excessive use of the platform, but the psychological hooks keep bringing them back (update from a friend’s life, the need to detach from the current environment, etc.) and the pattern never breaks.
• The platform algorithm is too smart to keep producing relevant content to bring the users back.
• Users recognize that time spent on Instagram can be utilized to learn relevant career skills (*they have career aspirations and are influenced by others’ achievements*). Unable to do so leads to more guilt.
• Users are stuck in the ‘not-useful content’ loop so deep that they don’t recognize the useful content anymore. Suggestions keep making it even more difficult to break the pattern.

 

Solutions:

Summary: The ideal solution would be to nudge the user to ‘reduce the usage’ or ‘engage with more meaningful content’ in a way that we don’t push them to a drop-off point. The drop in engagement (thus revenue opportunities) can be countered by adding substitute products (like courses, classes, etc.).

1. Content Restructuring → Recognize excessive platform usage (e.g. more than N logins/day, or 3+ hours/day, or 90 minutes/session for → who are active daily in the past 1 month), and thereafter, push more learning oriented content (Educational content, Sponsored courses - content specification through metadata like hashtags, or certain keywords). The platform can learn the interest (like investing, photography, etc.), and adjust the choice of content. Thereafter, readjust the clock daily! 

 I believe this will benefit content creators too, as they stand to gain more engagement. In terms of revenue, Instagram can benefit from sales commissions (in the case of sponsored content). 

2. Lazy Loading → Introduce Lazy loading or Excessive usage prompts after extreme use (more than 5+ hours daily). The drawback is that the engagement will reduce without Instagram producing any additional revenue. 

3. Add more Ads after certain usage: This will prompt the user to break out of the doomscrolling pattern and at the same time, will increase the CLTV. 

 

Prioritization: 

Since there is no resource or time constraint, I’m going to choose feature(s) that have maximum impact and that make more sense for Instagram. 

 

Out of the mentioned features, 'Content Restructuring' is my top pick as Instagram doesn’t have to compromise on engagement, and at the same time, the users get more value for their time. I believe that if a user leaves the platform with new learnings because of more meaningful content on their feed, it’ll ultimately help reduce the guilt. Also, this sounds more ethical and benefits content creators and consumers too. 

 

Success Criteria:

• Avg time spent on app per day *(Monitor for before and after launch) 
• DAU, MAU, WAU

{This will indicate the target group's engagement patterns}

• ARPU {To indicate revenue}
• Content relevancy (Has introducing the new content resulted in irrelevant content?)

I will first try and define what does guilty means for a user :

1. Spending time watching reels which are non - value add yet addictive to watch and share

2. Spending time watching stories of friends who are acquaintance but not close friends

3. Spending time going through the feed

4. Spending time to edit a post/story to upload on instagram daily/weekly,etc.

and many more...

Objective : How can users feel less guilty i.e. while they are spending time on instagram they shoul not feel they have wasted a lot of time on non-value add & for instagram it should be able to generate revenue

Success Metric : Revenue generated

Guardrail Metric : Time spent per user remains same or increases

User Type :

Dividing by age -

1. Less than 18 years old ( Users who are in school/ are justgraduating & moving in to college )

2. 18 to 25 years old ( User who are in college )

3. 25 to 40 years of age - In a job & trying to grow their career

4. 40 to 60 years of age - Stabilizing their life

5. 60+ years - Post retirement

Let us look at problem of users in age bracket of 18 to 25 who are in college & look at the type of content they consume on instagram daily. We are looking at this segment with a assumption that most of the user base of the instagram is within this age group.

Let us also assume for the age of 18 to 25 they typically spend 1 hr everyday on Instagram

Pain points of this segment -

Has less time to spend on social media given the academic pressure but ends up spending atleast 1 hr daily on Insta. Time spent is non- value add

Parents of these age group perceive spending time on insta as a time wasted for their children

Solution -

There are two ways to go about solving this problem

1. Reduce the screen time

2. Improve the quality of content consumed

Reducing the screen time may work against instagram as it is bettwer for instagram that users spend max time in the app

We can do point 2 -

Add "productive" or informative content to give user illusion of learning

Create 2 different modes within the instagram and nudge users with ads to shift to a productive mode after 30 mins of usage time

Create a separate community of productive users posting productive content related academics and non academics for a user to learn which can also be shared with fellow colleagues on insta

For increasing the revenue collaborate with creators/influencers in a productive community to sell course, take free live sessions, etc. on instagram. This way even creators would get a targeted audience