Latest Bogus Report Blames Facebook For Productivity Loss

from the yeah,-try-again dept

We've pointed out in the past how often we see totally bogus reports about productivity losses due to "personal surfing" at work. These reports are always based on research done by companies that sell internet filters, and yet the press almost never bothers to point out this fairly obvious conflict of interest. The latest twist on all of this is for one internet filtering company (who shall remain nameless, since they don't deserve free advertising for pulling this stunt) to now tie productivity losses to Facebook. All the filter company does is estimate how much time people spend on Facebook, and then claim that all that time is lost productivity. Of course, this ignores all of the real evidence from actual studies that show things like people who spend time personal surfing at work usually more than make it up either by being more productive when they're working, or by working from home at other times. Then there was the study that showed that those who do some personal surfing at work tend to see "better time management, stress reduction, improvement of skill sets and helping to achieve a balance between work and personal life." We wouldn't want to encourage that at all among employees, now would we? Since these filtering firms just won't stop these bogus studies, does someone want to calculate just how much money has been wasted by these firms performing such ridiculous studies?

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