An investigation of the impact of demographics on cyberloafing from an educational setting angle

Highlights

• Male students cyberloaf more than female students.

• Nine-year of the Internet experience is a threshold for more cyberloafing.

• Every day Internet usage causes more cyberloafing.

• Advanced and expert internet skills result in more cyberloafing.

• The dominance of males in cyberloafing diminishes in socialization.

Abstract

In the current study, the impact of demographics on cyberloafing behaviors are investigated in educational settings. Correlational study method was utilized. There are 282 high schools students in the study. Two instruments, demographic information and cyberloafing questionnaires, are used to collect data. Demographic information are gender, grade, Internet skills, Internet usage and Internet experience. Cyberloafing behaviors are personal business, news follow-up and socialization. Findings indicate that males cyberloaf more than females. Advanced-expert users cyberloaf more than novice-intermediate users. Those who uses internet everyday cyberloaf more than other people using internet less often. Nine years more experience in internet experience increase cyberloafing behaviors. The relationships between demographics and different types of cyberloafing are also analyzed for deep understanding. The dominance of male cyberloafing diminishes in socialization behaviors. Internet skills is only associated with socialization. The results are discussed, and recommendation for further studies are presented.

Introduction

In order to fully exploit of human capital, knowledge and learning, use of Information and Communication Technologies have become critical in Knowledge Economy (Lytras & de Pablos, 2011). Today, one cannot think of a workplace without computers and the Internet. Despite the benefits provided by the Internet, its misuse has become extensive (Liberman, Seidman, McKenna, & Buffardi, 2011). According to Henle, Kohut, and Booth (2009), technology has created a revolution that hangs over the workplace like a double-edged sword. It is impossible to ignore the ‘dark side’ of Internet usage at work: While employees may spend great amounts of time using computers with Internet connections for work-related tasks, they may sometimes use this technology for non-work-related tasks during working hours, and, according to Blanchard and Henle (2008), the amount of time employees spend on Internet-based non-work-related tasks has increased in recent years. Popular non-work-related Internet-based activities include online shopping; blogging; gaming; instant messaging; gambling; booking vacations; viewing pornography; job hunting; checking, sending, and receiving private emails; personal investing; participating in auctions, visiting sports, news and entertainment sites; and general ‘surfing the net’ (Lim, 2002, Vitak et al., 2011, O’Neill et al., 2014).

In general, the literature uses the term ‘cyberloafing’ to describe a set of behaviors in which an employee engages in electronically-mediated activities that his or her immediate supervisor would not consider job-related (Askew, Coovert, Vandello, Taing, & Bauer, 2011). Research that views cyberloafing as negative behavior refers to “the personal use of email and the Internet while at work,” often times under the guise of doing actual work (Blanchard & Henle, 2008); “voluntary acts of employees using their companies’ Internet access for non-work-related purposes during working hours”; and “a counterproductive work-place behavior resulting in production deviance” (Lim, 2002). ‘Cyberslacking’, another widely used term, is similarly described as an extension of typical counterproductive workplace behavior that involves distraction and putting off work to ‘surf the Internet’ for non-work purposes (O’Neill, Hambley, & Chatelier, 2014). Lesser-used terms used to refer to the same phenomenon include ‘cyberbludging’, ‘online loafing’, ‘internet deviance’, ‘problematic internet use’, ‘internet addiction’, ‘internet dependency’, ‘internet abuse’ and ‘internet addiction disorder’ (Kim & Byrne, 2011).

Lim and Chen (2012) conceptualized cyberloafing as a form of workplace cyber activity that detracts employees from their work, prevents them from completing tasks and sometimes results in financial losses due to reduced worker productivity. Oswalt, Elliott-Howard, and Austin (2003) goes further to suggest that cyberloafing threatens network security, strains organizational bandwidth and can leave employers vulnerable to lawsuits on a variety of issues, ranging from securities fraud to sexual harassment.

While indicating that the temptation to use the Internet for personal reasons distracts employees from their work, Kim and Byrne (2011) described cyberloafing as unproblematic but aimless, slacking behavior caused by a lack of self-control. On the other hand, cyberloafing has also been described as a positive workplace behavior, with studies referring to cyberloafing as a stress-reducer that adds variety to daily routines (Lim & Chen, 2009) and as a necessary form of periodic break that allows employees to recharge their energy level and increase their work performance (Lim and Chen, 2012, Sonnentag, 2003). A study by Coker (2013) found that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing replenishes employees’ attention more than less enjoyable types of breaks in the experiment. As part of the same study, a nation-wide survey on Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing found an association between Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing and perceived productivity among individuals under 30 years of age. Furthermore, König and De La Guardia (2014) stated that since employees are expected to check their work e-mails at home, they may reciprocate this by answering personal e-mails at work. Thus, there is a blurred-border between work and non-work internet behaviors.

Lim and Chen (2012) found the effects of cyberloafing to vary between men and women, with men reporting a more positive impact than women. The authors also distinguished between two different types of cyberloafing behavior – emailing and browsing – and found that while emailing had a negative impact on employee emotions, browsing had a positive impact. Another study by Blanchard and Henle (2008) also made distinctions between different forms of cyberloafing: minor, e.g. sending and receiving personal e-mails at work, and serious, e.g. online gambling and surfing adult-oriented sites.

It should also be noted that most studies examining cyberloafing have focused on traditional Internet-based activities, rarely on more recent Web 2.0 activities such as watching online videos, blogging, or using social network sites (Vitak et al., 2011).