Surfing The Net At Work Is GOOD For Productivity!

Next time you are caught surfing the Internet in the office do not apologise - it is actually making you a better worker. Browsing the web can refresh employees and make them the more productive, a study has found. Those who surfed the Internet as a break from their duties came back better prepared than people who made a phone call or texted their loves ones.

The researchers concluded that looking at the Web could serve an ‘important restorative function’ for those stuck at a computer all day. They asked 96 undergraduate students to split into three groups a control group, a ‘rest-break’ group and a Web-surfing group.  Everyone was asked to spend 20 minutes highlighting as many letter e’s as they could find in a sample text.

 

The researchers found that the web-surfers were significantly more productive and effective at the tasks than those in the other two groups and reported lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement. Authros Don Chen and Vivien Lim of the National University of Singapore said in the their report: ‘Browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function.' Dr Lim added that when surfing the Web people ‘usually choose to visit only the sites that they like- it's like going for a coffee or snack break.

‘Breaks of such nature are pleasurable, rejuvenating the Web surfer. Nobody can control what they receive in an email so it is ‘cognitively more demanding, relative to Web surfing, as you need to pay attention to what is said on the email,’ she said. A growing number of studies have suggest the opposite of what the research says - that browsing the web is ‘rewiring’ our brains to make us less productive.

Amongst the leading critics is American technologist Nicholas Carr who has written a provocative article in The Atlantic magazine entitled: 'Is Google Making us Stupid?' He argued that because information is available in bite-sized chunks so easily we are longer trained to be able to concentrate for prolonged periods.

The study called ‘Impact of Cyberloafing on Psychological Engagement’ was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio, Texas.