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Bumble now lets you hit snooze to take a break from your phone

Bumble now lets you hit snooze to take a break from your phone

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Image: Bumble

Bumble is introducing a “Snooze” feature that lets you pause your activity on the app and essentially let your matches know that you’re on a “digital detox.” The goal is to help users take a step back from the distracting noise of social media and instead focus on their own mental well-being. It’s a much-needed addition, especially to a dating app in which silence from a match could mean rejection. The Snooze feature politely lets your matches know that it’s not them, it’s you.

The settings allow you to take a break for 24 hours, 72 hours, a week, or indefinitely. You can set statuses like “traveling,” “focusing on work,” “on a digital detox,” or “prioritizing myself,” but you don’t need to provide a reason if you don’t want to. Going into Snooze mode will make your profile invisible, and you won’t appear in the swipe carousel. Your existing matches will be able to see that you’re away and that you’re “unplugged right now, but will be back soon.”

Image: Bumble

The tech world is starting to realize that too much use of its own digital products can be harmful to users. Both iOS 12 and Android Pie are adding digital well-being tools to help people better manage their relationships with their phones, and Instagram and Facebook have announced they’re adding dashboards that will tell you how much time you’ve spent in their apps. Bumble’s Snooze feature is the latest iteration of this trend, but it may be the first that lets others know that you’re deliberately taking a step back, which normalizes taking digital breaks.