Twitter, Facebook 'costing British economy £1.38bn'

Funny how those kinds of calculation fail to take into account how people were slacking of before twitter and facebook.

I guess there wasn't articles titled 'Reading newspapers at work costs economy 2bn' because offline slacking off is harder to monitor.

Shouldn't something be done about the way we work to get real and take into account that human cannot concentrate on boring tasks for 8 hours a day without breaks?

"People do other stuff besides 'work' at the office. Film at 11." This is arbitrary. You could just as easily target 'sports', and survey workers on how much company time they spend managing their fantasy football teams, checking scores, etc.

I really detest this type of statistic. 1. Why solely value the output of the 'national factory' in fiscal terms? Why don't we just jack in our leisure time, take no breaks, eat at our desks, reduce sleep and work 22 hours a day? 2. What about the economic benefits of (in this case) social networks? The serendipity of meeting new contacts and finding out new information, or the increased well-being from wider social interaction.

In the UK, the same statistic is traipsed out whenever it snows - 'Snowfall costs UK economy £X billion' - but come on, you can't measure opportunity cost like that and you can't value the positives of getting a day at home with family or friends.

The purpose of life isn't purely to work or increase GDP. Whatever it is, it isn't that. Take a long lunch, enjoy yourself, keep an eye on the metrics but don’t go crazy like this.

Haha I was just doing the math few days ago when I heard people spend 8billion minutes a day on facebook. The numbers look incredible if you apply the avg American minimum wage.

Of course this is just fantasy land. Anyone that argues these figures should be taken seriously has a lot to prove.

I'm curious if Facebook would give in if the British government offered #1.38bn to shut down Facebook in the UK.

Isn't it great how technology enables us to do achieve the same end result in new ways?