Using social media excessively during work hours occupies precious work time. Social media overuse at work is becoming prevalent across the globe, hurting the productivity of millions of social media users. To recoup work time, many users turn to social media blockers, which rely on users to specify a blocking configuration. However, user-chosen configurations tend not to produce the intended benefits due to the lack of guidelines.

To provide the first set of evidence-based guidelines on the usage of social media blockers, we examine two dimensions of blocking configuration: (1) block intensity, pertaining to the amount social media usage should be reduced, and (2) block immediacy, involving a new design called gradual block that gradually increases the block intensity as opposed to immediately enforcing the target block intensity (the status quo design). We conducted a randomized experiment lasting four weeks, during which we collected fine-grained computer usage data to allow us to measure work time. 

First, we found that while the partial block of social media increases work time, the complete block of social media decreases work time. Furthermore, the treatment effect varies with the users’ intraday social media consumption patterns on a user-time level. Second, we found that the new gradual block feature exerts positive impacts on work time, and its effects increase with the user-time-specific social media usage levels. Finally, we found a nuanced three-way interaction effect between block intensity, block immediacy, and social media consumption levels. Implications of our findings to theory and practice are discussed.

Abstract: Less is Not Always More

Assistant Professor

China Bridge Challenge, 1st Place

I am the faculty mentor for a team of 4 brilliant undergraduate students. The team won the first place with a $6000 prize.

Best Paper in General IS Track

for paper "Less is Not Always More: Investigating the Impact of Block Intensity and Immediacy of Social Media Blockers on Work Time"

Dissertation Fellowship

Awarded based on scholarly record and research significance, with limited number of students receiving the award

Best Student Paper Award

Dean's Small Research Grant

Granted $10000 for social media blocker research project

Investigating the Impact of Block Difficulty  and Immediacy of Social Media Blockers on Productivity

Less is Not Always More

LLM in Creative Work

Coordination of Functionality Richness, First-party Content Quality, and Revenue-sharing

An independent, progressive student magazine.

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MikuTap for macOS

Insert cite keys in a breeze on any app using Alfred and Zotero.

Alfred Citekey Insertion Add-on for Zotero

A platform for publishing thoughts, ideas, opinions for CUHK(SZ) undergraduate students.

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Pla orm Integra on Tools Investment, Third-party Content Crea on, and First-party Advantage in Bundling Businesses

Investigating the Impact of Goal Difficulty  and Immediacy of Social Media Blockers on Productivity

Less is not always more

Two-­sided Platform Pricing & Integration, First­party and Third­party Content Creation

Investigating the Impact of Block Difficulty and Immediacy of Social Media Blockers on Productivity

Platform Integration, First-party Advantage and Third-party Content Creation

Net Neutrality: Network Congestion, Social Welfare and Service Tiering Regulations

Joint work with Soumya Sen and Alok Gupta

Effcts of Attendance Tracking on Academic Performance

As one of the founding coordinators of MISQ Insider, I coordinate the publication of MISQ Insider and contribute content.

Coordinator

A two-month data journalism boot-camp designed for professional journalists and journalism students to get started in data journalism, with proﬁciency in basic Natural Language Processing, Data Mining, Web Scraping, and Web Front-end Engineering, including d3.js, echarts.js, etc.

Teaching Assistant

MSBA 6410: Exploratory Data Analytics
IDSC 6444: Business Analytics for Managers

IDSC 4444: Descriptive and Predictive Analytics.
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Zenan (Alan) Chen

2022