Procrastination on social networks: Triggers and countermeasures

Abstract

Procrastination on social networking sites (SNS) can impact academic performance and user's well-being. SNSs embed features that encourage users to be always connected and updated, e.g., the notification features. Such persuasive features can exploit peer pressure as well and lead users to believe they are expected to interact immediately, especially for those who may have less impulse control and seek for relatedness and popularity. We argue that SNS can be built to host countermeasures for such behavior and help people regulate their usage and preoccupation about it better. In this paper, we presented a mixed-method study including a qualitative (i.e., focus groups, diary, interviews, and co-design) and a quantitative phase (i.e., a survey) with 334 participants. Through the qualitative phase, we identified: (1) features of an SNS seen by participants as facilitators for procrastination, e.g., notification, immersive design, and surveillance of presence, and (2) countermeasures, such as reminders, chat timer, and goal setting, can be facilitated via SNS design to combat procrastination, and (3) a pairing between the features and the countermeasures. We then (4) confirmed these results and the pairing through the survey phase. Our study showed that countermeasures could be implemented to be universal across all SNS on one or even more device.

Combating Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) on Social Media: The FoMO-R Method

“…People may find it difficult to say ‘no’ to temptation, but it is an important skill that we all need to protect our health and well-being [ 50 ]. Distractions and temptations can often affect an individual’s desired goals; for instance, social media can, to some extent, motivate procrastination, even when the individual wishes to regulate their usage [ 51 ]. Self-talk is a tool that can be used to frame an individual’s resistance to temptation and to motivate goal-directed behaviour.…”

Managing Procrastination on Social Networking Sites: The D-Crastinate Method

“…The findings of our studies have demonstrated that procrastination on SNS could occur due to peer pressure where users might believe they have to meet their peers’ expectations to maintain popularity and to build a positive image [ 8 , 13 ]. Therefore, managing others’ expectations can play a significant role to reduce that pressure, eventually reducing the possibility of procrastination.…”

“…This may be interconnected with digital addiction, where the desire to achieve mood modification leads individuals to use social media as a way to avoid stressful or demanding tasks [ 8 ]. Procrastination means a delay of another task and our previous research in [ 8 , 12 , 13 ] showed that users wish to see motivational elements in that task that then add a degree of satisfaction that they get from social media, for example, being rewarded, task completion and getting social support while doing it.…”

“…While social media has brought many benefits, such usage styles can be seen as problematic, resulting in reduced academic performance, lack of real-world social skills, neglecting meals and physical activities. Our previous work has also demonstrated that the design of SNS features plays a significant role in facilitating procrastination [ 8 , 12 , 13 ]. This indicates that a method to combat procrastination on SNS needs to build resilience to these SNS triggers and utilise additional features to combat them.…”

“…We suggested countermeasures to combat procrastination and how to implement these countermeasures in SNS design [ 12 ]. We then conducted a survey involving 334 participants to examine the extent to which the respondents agree with our previous findings [ 13 ]. Based on the results of the previous studies and other theoretical underpinnings ( Section 2 ), we developed the D-Crastinate method to combat procrastination on SNS ( Section 3 ).…”