I Love Cyberslacking

For this weeks Blog assignment about the internet and all of the various ways to misuse it I decided to look into “cyberslacking”. Cyberslacking is basically the use of the internet at work for personal use and benefit. We all know it happens all over the place and some of us have probably done it at one time or another.

I am no stranger to the world of cyberslacking. I use some of my time on the computer for personal use such as e-mail, and or searching for information non work related. I have a job where I work at the front desk of a health club and am able to use the internet for school purposes when I am not to busy. But sometimes I and others use it for our own personal use. I also have friends that seem to be way into using the internet for their personal use at work. Sometimes they send me tens of e-mails about random crap and I often wonder how they have so much time to screw off on the internet while at work.

On the article that I had read it is estimated that using the internet for personal reasons is setting U.S. companies back $178 billion annually. That high number equals out to be about 5,000 per employee. That is a lot of wasted time and money that employers are dishing out with zero productivity coming out. The article explained that surveyed managers on average estimated that each employee is using the Internet for personal use for 5.9 hours a week, the survey said. So after multiplying these numbers by the average American hourly salary, researchers came up with the figure of $178 billion.
I agree that something needs to be done to stop all the time wasted for personal use on the computer. On the other hand I have always thought it to be no big deal if one is to use the internet to check something or get some information briefly for personal use. It all depends on the amount of time spent during the personal use. I also think that if the employees are on break checking the internet should be no big deal. I think that if employers invested in some kind of software or monitored the internet use that the misuse would stop or at least slow down.
I think that in our culture we all expect instant gratification. We do not want to wait until we get home or off work to check up on personal things on the internet. I also think that our culture works too much and to hard thus wanting to have a break at work for personal internet use. The internet is kind of like an escape for us as we had further discussed earlier in the term. I can’t find any real way to relate this weeks reading with the Blog, but I can from previous readings such as the internet for an escape from our daily grind of work. It all makes sense as the earlier readings from Postman and Wood and Smith explained.

Yay

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