Less Is Not Always More: The Impact of Social Media Block Intensity and Immediacy on Work Time

Social media blocking applications are technology-mediated behavioral controls used by individuals and organizations to manage time allocation. However, these social media blockers have not produced the intended benefits because we lack clear understanding of how different control configurations affect outcomes. Drawing upon organizational control theory, we argue that there exists a fundamental misalignment between the controlled upstream behavior (social media usage) and the desired downstream outcome (increased work time) in the context of social media usage controls. We address this critical gap in the literature by investigating (1) control degree (the restrictiveness of the control mechanism) and (2) control immediacy (whether controls are implemented abruptly or gradually). We conducted a four-week randomized experiment using custom-built software to manipulate these control configurations and collected fine-grained computer usage data to objectively measure work time allocation. Our results reveal a curvilinear effect of control degree; partial blocking of social media increases work time, whereas complete blocking backfires and reduces work time. Furthermore, gradual implementation of controls is more effective than immediate implementation, especially for users with high baseline social media usage. Post hoc analyses suggest that effective control configurations improve work time by enabling users to maintain longer, uninterrupted work sessions. These findings extend control theory by demonstrating that the highest degree of control is not always the most effective and introducing the temporal dimension of control implementation as an important design consideration. Our research provides evidence-based guidelines for designing more effective digital workplace controls and offers new theoretical insights into how behavioral controls should be calibrated when targeting downstream performance outcomes.

History: Jason Thatcher, Senior Editor; Idris Adjerid, Associate Editor.

Funding: The funding for this research is jointly supported by Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota and Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.0493.