Although those in middle and executive management are critical of workers using company hours for social media surfing, they are also most likely to surf the internet for private reasons during work hours, according to a Norwegian study.

The study was conducted on more than 11 000 Norwegian employees using an online survey.

It is very interesting that top executives, who are negative to private web-surfing during working hours, are the ones who surf the most for private purposes when at work,” says Postdoctoral Fellow Cecilie Schou Andreassen.

Among other questions, participants were asked to indicate on a scale of 1 -5  how much they agreed with social media use at the work place and how often they engaged in social media browsing.

Unsurprisingly, the older the participants the lower they rated their social media use during work time.

Males were found to be more likely to engage in work time Facebooking. Singles also reported using social media more than those in relationships.

But messing around on the internet or ‘cyberloafing’ is not necessarily a bad thing. In a separate study, browsing the web and reading articles (like this one) was found to have a positive effect on mood and respondents felt that it helped them at work.

Emailing though was reported to have a negative effect on mood, but it need not  be. Check out our advice from, How To Communicate Better At Work, here’s a hint: Don’t check your email every 15 minutes.