Recent research suggests that social media might be costing the UK economy billions of pounds each year. This news is sure to worry bosses and likely to irritate employees who feel that this might be used as an excuse to reduce their internet privileges. This study suggests that employees are spending a lot of time each day on social media sites like FaceBook and Twitter when they are being paid to work. If this lost productivity is estimated for all businesses in the UK then it really does lead to a huge amount of wasted time; this time is money as any economist will tell you.
It is likely that we can expect more crackdowns by business managers around the UK in the light of this news. A lot of businesses already block social media from the work computers, but this doesn’t stop people using their mobile devices. We can probably expect that some companies will increase their efforts to reduce the amount of time their employers spend on FaceBook and other social media sites during work hours. Maybe those clever people at FaceBook will invent an application that will alert employers when their employees have logged on to the site – it wouldn’t surprise me.
I feel that a lot of this worry about the effect of social media on the economy is grossly overrated. It assumes that if people weren’t using social media at work they would be more productive. I don’t think that slacking off is a recent invention, in fact it is this ability to slack off now and again during the day that keeps us productive. If people weren’t using this time on the web they would like spend the time staring out the window or catching a sneaky nap.
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