Social Media and Task Performance: Does Being Online distract task completion?

Abstract

At present, social media are connected with education. Both influence daily life and studying since they impact formal and informal relations. This study explores the role of social media in task performance. Based on Mackworth’s clock test, we experimented with university students (N=54), which assessed their capacity to concentrate on the task when exposed to notifications from social networking. We explored whether the appearance of social media notifications regarding different stimulus properties (i.e., sound and vision) lowered cognitive resource capacity to concentrate on the main task. The findings revealed that the mere presence of notifications affected task performance. However, the focal relationship was more complex.