The internet: procrastination station
I had e-mails to respond to, reading to do, an essay to write, and an exam to study for. Instead, I was halfway through a Jack Maynard vlog on YouTube. It’s not like I didn’t know what I had to get done; I had my planner on my left and a to-do list on the right. I was actively procrastinating, and I knew it. As the vlog came to a close, it seemed like the most natural time to re-focus on work, until Jack urged all of his viewers to go watch Joe Sugg’s vlog, since they had been together all day and the two vlogs were kind of went hand-in-hand. So I listened to Jack and went to watch Joe’s vlog.
By the end, I had sacrificed seventeen minutes to Jack’s vlog and thirteen minutes to Joe’s vlog. In the total thirty minutes I spent procrastinating on YouTube, I could have been completely done sending e-mails and well into my reading assignment, but I wasn’t. I was still staring at a completely untouched to-do list.
My inability to get started on these tasks underscores a common reason for procrastination in college students: feeling overwhelmed. According to a recent study by StudyMode, an international network that provides students with online learning tools, 51% of female college students and 42% of male college students admit to procrastinating because they feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.
Although that overwhelmed feeling is among the most common reasons for college-student procrastination, Dr. Maggie Wray says it is just one of many underlying reasons that plague college students. Other key reasons include perfectionism or fear of failure, and resistance to the feeling of being “forced” to do work.
So if students aren’t doing their work because they are paralyzed with fear, whatever the fear maybe, or otherwise detest the work they’ve been asked to do, where does that time go? The same research from StudyMode that asked students why they procrastinate, also asked them how they spend their time when they are procrastinating. The results pointed to watching TV or movies and using social media as the two most common forms of procrastination.
A friend recently asked me what I was doing my senior research on and I told him that I am studying UMBC students’ procrastination habits and what they attempt to get out of procrastination. In admitting to me that he himself is a procrastinator, he then said that the internet is why he procrastinates. That statement makes sense, and certainly lines up previously conducted research. However, following that statement, he said that “the internet is 100% the reason why [students procrastinate].” His claim brings up a deeper question, is the internet the source of our procrastination or is it just the latest and most advanced way to waste time and hide from the tasks that scare us?
If procrastination is about combating a feeling of being forced or overwhelmed, then we can enter that combat with any amour we want, so what does it mean that the internet seems to be pinpointed as the key culprit?
