Is Social Media reaching toxic levels for business productivity?

Back on 17 February I published a post about social media overload titled “Is Social Media Hormetic?”

In it I drew a parallel to the old practice of taking small quantities of Arsenic as a tonic, even with the knowledge that a higher dose would have fatal consequences. Proving the old saying “What doesn’t kill, cures.”

What’s your toxic threshold for social media?

It seems that in the last 8 months many people are not only tolerating a higher level of social media but are actively increasing their consumption.

Is it a good thing? For advertisers and marketers, it might be. For employers of workers not needing to use social media as part of their jobs, usage levels are already toxic.

Not toxic as in damaging the health of workers (although it could be) but toxic to the employer in reduced productivity, distraction and loss of focus.

Chloe Carter sent me this infographic from Learn Stuff which is more alarming than a barrel full of Arsenic because of the implications of lost productivity due to a rise in time spent on social media during working hours.

Direct link to the infographic.

Frightening information in those statistics. Which makes me wonder if the biggest threat to our economies is not the loss of jobs to China and the developing world, but our addiction to social media. Perhaps instead of hackers trying to destroy our computer systems, the most dangerous weapons in a future cyber war would be endless launches of addictive new social media platforms.

All the more reason to get smart about the time we do spend on social media and other time-wasting activities. The best tool I have found for tracking productive and unproductive time is Rescue Time, there is a free version for personal use and an upgraded one for tracking users on a network. If you spend any time on social media and email during your working hours, try it, you will be shocked by the first report. It has helped me increase my productivity levels from 50% to over 70% most weeks.

That is my affiliate link, if you buy the upgrade from this link you will not pay any more, but I will receive a commission. I still use the free version, it has all the features I need. I wrote about it in more detail in a post in February

What do you think?

Is it time for employers to set more clear boundaries on social media access in the work place?

Wishing you success.