An investigation of the impact of demographics on cyberloafing from an educational setting angle
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).
Section snippets
Who Cyberloafs? Differences in cyberloafing
At present, not much is known about factors that influence attitudes toward and actual use of the Internet for personal purposes while at work. The literature does indicate that employees are more likely to cyberloaf if the behavior is understood and accepted as a cultural norm of the organization (D’Abate, 2005); if they want to reduce their stress (Lim & Chen, 2009); and because it is restorative and associated with greater happiness at work (Stanton, 2002). At the same time, employees
Cyberloafing at school
Development of school characteristics and building unique school culture for the use of ICT policies as one part of school innovation management is required to prevent misuse while being a part of competitive knowledge economy (Zhao & Ordóñez de Pablos, 2009). Because cyberloafing is considered to occur mainly in office environments (Pee, Woon, & Kankanhalli, 2008), research into the subject is conducted mainly in workplace settings. However, with the expansion of computers and Internet access
Procedures
This study was designed as a correlational study (Creswell, 2012), which allowed the researchers to evaluate the relationships and impacts among independent and dependent variables.
Purpose of the study
This study aimed to observe the nature of cyberloafing behaviors as they occur in educational settings; to examine the extent to which cyberloafing behaviors are affected by previously identified demographic characteristics; and to analyze the cause-effect relationships between demographics and different types of
Types of cyberloafing in educational settings
The higher the score on the cyberloafing questionnaire, the more types of reported cyberloafing behaviors were engaged in by participants. Overall, participants reported engaging in more than 40% of the cyberloafing behaviors listed on the questionnaire, including 33.6% of personal business, 45.2% of news follow-up, and 46.9% of socialization behaviors. Descriptive statistics related to cyberloafing are presented in Table 2.
Demographic variables affecting cyberloafing in educational settings
A multiple regression model with a stepwise method was used to test the
Discussion
The study findings are discussed below according to the specific research questions.
Conclusion and recommendations for further studies
Most studies on cyberloafing are conducted in work settings, where cyberloafing is an inherently controversial issue. In contrast, the present study examined cyberloafing in an educational setting, focusing on different types of demographic characteristics and different types of cyberloafing. The study attempted to analyze the extent to which literature-driven demographics affected different types of cyberloafing in order to gain greater insight into cyberloafing behaviors and their
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