Social media use at work hampers productivity: study

Use of online social media for personal purposes during working hours can have a negative effect on work performance and the well-being of organisations, a new study has found.
"Every day, more than one billion people worldwide use social media," said Cecilie Schou Andreassen, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway.
This habit has also invaded the workplace, as some research reports that four out of five employees use social media for private purpose during working hours, she said.
Surprisingly, although this type of distraction may potentially harm the well-being of organisations, no studies of this relationship have been conducted until now.

Andreassen and colleagues specifically assessed the use of social network sites for personal purposes during working hours, and whether such use is related to self-reported work performance - controlling for basic demographic, personality, and work-related variables.
The study shows that use of social media during working hours can impair performance at work and also harm the well-being of organisations.

The overall finding of the study is that this type of distraction has a negative effect on self-reported work performance.
However, the effects may be regarded as slight enough to be irrelevant, with no practical importance.
On the other hand, the study's results cannot rule out that use of online social network sites for personal purposes actually stimulates creativity and inspires some workers, researchers said.

"Also, it cannot be ruled out that use of online social network sites aids performance, particularly if workers are interacting with their co-workers through these sites," they said.
However, the study explicitly focused on the use of online social network sites for personal purposes at work; use involving communication with co-workers was therefore excluded as a study focus.