Contrary to popular belief

Can social media breaks make you more productive?

FOR AS LONG as social media and smartphones have been around, managers have been fretting about distraction. This has become a full-on debate that has lasted for two decades now: some argue that social media breaks are beneficial, in that they break up the monotony of the day and serve as something like a digital smoke break, while others argue that they are, in fact, a time sink that drains productivity.

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But maybe that debate is too simplistic, and rather than question whether the act of going on socials is productive or distracting at work, we ought to be more concerned about what people are seeing when they’re scrolling.

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A team of researchers led by Rebecca Greenbaum, a professor at Rutgers University, set out to look into this, and found that a social media break can have a wide range of impacts, from motivation and encouragement to withdrawal and anxiety, depending on the type of content someone interacts with.

“It’s not just a distraction,” she told HRReporter. “Our unique takeaway is actually looking at the type of information that people are taking in throughout the workday, and how that relates to emotions and motivation, and then work outcomes.”

For instance, researchers found that workers who view content revolving around family tend to experience a motivating, productivity-boosting effect. “Being reminded about family energizes a focus on growth opportunities and working harder to achieve goals,” the researchers said.

On the flipside, content that emphasizes accomplishment could have negative effects. “Accomplished social media content can spark avoidance motivation in the form of anxiety or social worry, because one’s failure to keep up with these external markers of success could suggest an inability to achieve that threatens one’s social standing,” the researchers wrote. (Entirely unsurprisingly, contentious political content causes almost universally negative effects.)

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Viewed this way, the researchers submit that social media breaks can have a positive impact on a workplace and aren’t universally a distraction — and suggest companies can actually use this effectively.

“A manager could support employees’ use of social media as a daily work break,” wrote Inc.com’s Kit Eaton, noting that employers encouraging employees to focus on posts with family-oriented or uplifting content might even be able to deliberately boost productivity (although this is definitely not the way social media algorithms tend to work).

“The fact that you’ve given explicit permission is also a boon,” Eaton said. “It shows you understand the fascination of social media, and you’re not punishing people for slacking off work for a handful of minutes.” Kieran Delamont