Surfing On The Boss’s Dime.

On the heels of a study concluding that the distractions of a modern office can be more debilitating than smoking marijuana, a new survey finds that people are more “addicted” to non-work related Web surfing than their morning coffee.

Harris Interactive conducted the study for Websense, asking respondents about their Web-surfing habits while at work, including whether they’d sooner give up their morning coffee or access to the Net for personal business. Just over one-half of respondents said they’d rather swear off coffee, compared to 44% who’d do without surfing the Web for their own devices while at work.

The survey was released just weeks after a report from Britain finding that modern communications tools can be so distracting to workers that they cause a loss of IQ greater than smoking marijuana.

Fully 50% of respondents said that they had spent some time accessing the Internet while at work for personal reasons, including 10% who said they spent an equal time on work-related and non-work related Web surfing.

Much of this surfing activity was fairly benign — 85% accessed news sites and 61% checked their e-mail. However, quite a few employees engaged in some kind of e-commerce activity — 56% had visited travel sites and 52% had browsed shopping sites — or conducted some online banking (58%). Just over 20% of men and 12% of women said they had visited a pornographic site while at work, though less than 20% of those who had said it was intentional.

A survey done by BURST! Media in December 2004 found lower non-work related usage levels, but tracked a greater variety of personal activities performed by workers, including a number of e-commerce and information-seeking activities.

Although the Internet has been available to many employees in the US for a number of years, at-work use continues to rise. Harris found that 93% of respondents said they used the Internet at work, compared to 86% the previous year. Utilizing the Web for something other than work has grown, such as personal e-mail. In fact, successive surveys conducted by UCLA and USC have shown personal e-mail use among US workers to be growing at a quicker rate than business use.