One in seven brings their Facebook addiction to work

IT security and control firm Sophos has revealed the results of a new survey examining the potential productivity implications for businesses that allow their employees to access Facebook during office hours.

Sophos polled 500 Facebook users to find out how often they accessed or checked the popular social networking site from work, and found that while 37.2 percent only visited the site once or twice a day, eight percent admitted using it up to ten times a day, and an astonishing 14.8 percent, approximately one in seven, confessed to being logged onto Facebook almost permanently during their working day.

"The results show that more than one fifth of these Facebook users are actually Facebook abusers. They're seriously struggling to tear themselves away from the website when they should be concentrating on their jobs - disturbing news for all organizations that are still allowing employees uncontrolled access," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"Several trade unions have spoken out in the site's defence, suggesting that employers should put more trust in their workforce, and clearly the majority of people are using the site in moderation. The problem is that a 20 percent addiction rate equates to an awful lot of loafing, while there's also the likelihood that the abusers could ruin it for the other rule-abiding users."