Procrastination on Social Networks: Types and Triggers

Abstract

Procrastination refers to a voluntary delay of a needed or committed task that might hurt productivity and wellbeing requirements such as self-acceptance, personal growth and positive relations with others. People might procrastinate due to a lack of motivation towards performing a task or a mismatch between the task and their skills. Social Networks Sites (SNS) are designed to provide users with the opportunity to socialise and feel relatedness despite being physically separated. SNSs design is typically equipped with a rich set of persuasive tools to encourage more social interaction. Such tools can entice procrastination when users have low self-regulation ability, and seek avoidance and mood modification. As a first step in designing persuasive features which would help people control their procrastination, there is a need to understand how existing SNS features persuade procrastination in the first place. In this paper, we conduct a multi-stage qualitative study to explore the occurrence of procrastination and the prominent features of SNS design that trigger and facilitate it. We use focus groups to explore SNS procrastination, and then get a more ecologically valid, detailed and in-context data via a ten days' diary study followed by clarification interviews. The findings shed light on prominent types of procrastination and features in SNS design that can persuade and increase, in certain contexts, the chance for procrastination.

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

“…Therefore, the distracting notification can be considered an external factor that could invoke and facilitate procrastination. Moreover, the design features of social networking sites (SNS) could facilitate procrastination in numerous cases such as users who instantly reply to messages to develop a positive self-image or because of the fear of missing out [ 7 , 8 ]. It has been suggested that procrastination is a trait that is determined by underlying personality factors [ 9 ].…”

“…Conflict could be argued to be one of the defining characteristics of procrastination in the context of SNS, as it means delaying one task in favour of staying on social media and doing something else [ 11 ]. 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.…”

“…The possibility of procrastination and delayed work may have increased due to the high level of enjoyment that SNS provide to their users, or due to the pressure that users may feel to respond instantly to meet their contacts’ expectations [ 8 ]. SNS features can exacerbate procrastination by providing an immersive and alternative space where users can create and potentially live different personas and roles.…”

“…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.…”

“…In this paper, we propose the D-Crastinate method to aid users to be conscious and in control of their procrastination on SNS. In our previous work, we demonstrated the role of SNS design in facilitating procrastination and explained the different types of procrastination [ 8 ]. We suggested countermeasures to combat procrastination and how to implement these countermeasures in SNS design [ 12 ].…”