When Stephanie Andel can feel her eyes glaze over scrolling through academic papers, institutional emails or student marking, she’ll open a new tab in her web browser and explore. “I take a few minutes every hour or two to surf the web, look at news or scan my Facebook feed to catch up with friends,” Andel, assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University Purdue University of Indianapolis, admits.

She’s not alone. Research shows that workers drift from their contracted tasks to personal email, social networks and the far corners of the internet for anything between a few hours a week to a few hours a day. Six out of 10 people admit they can’t get through the workday without checking their social media, according to online learning firm Udemy, while two-thirds of us say Facebook is the biggest time-sink. This phenomenon – known as cyberloafing – is an issue that costs businesses $85bn a year through lost time, according to researchers at the University of Nevada.

Cyberloafing is often presented as a negative. “Some of the early research into it was framing it as procrastination,” explains Dr Fuschia Sirois of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Psychology. “People were cyberloafing to escape.” Yet more recent research suggests that a degree of cyberloafing may be beneficial to employees; that small breaks help them refocus between tasks and even deal with workplace stress. Briefly stepping back – also known as “psychological detachment” – helps them muster energy to continue through the workday.

Yet employers know that distracted workforces mean lost productivity. Some block access to certain websites and social networks, or develop strict internet use policies. Others say trusting employees to decide what’s appropriate is a better way to ensure good job performance. But is it possible to establish exactly how much time spent surfing online rejuvenates, without tipping over into slacking off?

How long is too long?

When it comes to cyberloafing – and finding the ‘right’ amount – Jonathan Wasserstrum, chief executive of New York real estate technology company Squarefoot, is a realist. He believes employees will slack off at times to regain focus regardless of workplace policies. “If someone is not being productive for a minute because they spent all morning in a deep session working with a few people, they can pretend to have a spreadsheet open, or they can relax for a couple of minutes,” he says. “The latter is going to be better for us in the long term.”

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