In a recent article is said that social media make office-employees more productive. The researches of the VU in Amsterdam had first conducted a research with student. The research had been done as next:
One side of the class was allowed to use social media apps when the want to use it, so no restrictions just like we use it. The other part of the class may only use social media apps twice for three minutes. After the college students had a test about the given college. The group students that got twice three minutes for social media had an average of 0,8 higher than the other group who can use social media whenever they want.
Also employees with an office job were tested (of course in a different way). A group of 162 employees had been monitored about how long they did about a certain job. They also were asked to fill in some questionnaires about concentration, sensitiveness for distraction etc. Here also two groups were formed, one could use social media as they always had done, and the other group could use social media for 3 minutes per hour. As expected: the prodoctivity in the 3-minutes group, the productivity was much higher.
Well, some questions raised when I read the article. First you can say ok, it seems obvious, you spend more time to work when you don’t use social media all the time. But during this experiment, there could be the hawthorne effect. So how valuable the study is, is I think doubtful.
Jon van der Avoird
Source: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/internet/4584405/1282763/social-media-maken-kantoorpersoneel-productiever.html
