Facebook Inc. wants us to have more “meaningful social interactions” on its platform, so it has begun a news feed shakeup designed to address the swaths of negative criticism it has faced lately.

The company came under considerable scrutiny last year first for the distribution of fake news and propaganda and later after research and reports indicated that too much scrolling may not be good for one’s mental health. This is more the case when people use the platform passively rather than interacting with people, and so Facebook said it is attempting to help us become more active on the platform.

On Thursday, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook’s priority this year should be to make sure the site is “good for people’s well-being” and to ensure that “time spent on Facebook is time well spent.” He also said the changes will likely lead to people spending less time on the platform.

From now on, Facebook’s algorithm will “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people” while demoting public posts that come from businesses and publishers. Facebook said that could affect the reach of businesses on the platform, but not if the content proves to be popular and is commented on.

Facebook also said it will continue to demote posts that could be said to be “engagement-bait,” or essentially trolling. In effect, this may reduce the amount of inflammatory or antagonistic political posts or even news that is evidently fake.

Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said Facebook usage has already been in a decline, which could have prompted the changes as much as the well-being of users. “We can speculate that the concerns reflected in Zuckerberg’s post may very well have been driving these declines,” he said.

“The company was (understandably) focused on driving user growth over the years, although former Facebook executives have recently described negative impacts on consumers from those efforts,” said Wieser. “To the extent that those criticisms are valid, action is warranted, even key metrics that the company has historically focused on are negatively impacted.”

Wieser sees Facebook facing a strong headwind in terms of growth in the short term, but he said the changes will be good for the long-term heath of the company. Investors initially didn’t seem overly worried, but on Friday, Facebook’s shares were falling 4 percent in morning trading on a mildly up day for the overall market.

Zuckerberg, now a father of two children, told The New York Times that it wasn’t all about bottom line. It is important, he said, that “when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world.”

Image: Jeanne Menjoulet via Flickr