Researching Procrastination on Social Networking Sites.

Abstract

Procrastination has become an important field in academic research. It refers to a voluntary delay that might lead to negative consequences such as low academic performance, low work productivity, and anxiety. Numerous studies have examined the factors that might lead people to procrastinate, such as low self-efficacy, low self-regulation, and low self-esteem. However, Social networking sites (SNSs) might be partially responsible for people procrastinating because users may stay online rather than performing their urgent tasks. SNS users have increased significantly in recent years, and this raises the question of whether the design of SNS features has contributed to users procrastinating and why this is the case? The research studies the relationship between SNS feature design and procrastination and also identify what features of SNSs might be able to predict the likelihood of user procrastination. Furthermore, we identified different countermeasures that can be introduced to the future design of SNS in order to combat procrastination. Then, the research develops a method that helps users to gain more control over their procrastination. This method is informed by psychological theories, interactive design, and usability evaluation and testing. The method can be used to inform software engineers when developing the design features for future software in order to help users to gain more control over their procrastination. To achieve this goal, several studies were conducted with SNS users. These studies include focus group, diary study, co-design, and online questionnaire. The results of these studies will guide the research to devise the final method of the research. The final method will be supported by persuasive techniques in order to help users to change their behaviour and gain more control over their procrastination without forcing them to change. In the following sub-sections we explained the procedures and provided the supplementary materials that we used in each study.