Correlation in between use of technology and procrastination among students

By Anja Djordjevic

19 January 2018

Digital technology expansion has introduced many challenges and possibilities of distractions in students’ life.

Still, it is undeniable that technology has offered many problem solutions in all fields including education. Does technology have solutions for decreasing procrastination? Is procrastination in the digital era necessarily harmful? This article will raise these questions while presenting the concept of students’ procrastination from a different perspective.

Procrastination is not a new phenomenon.

It can be assumed that the procrastination arrived at the same time as the first assigned task. Indeed, the first written testimony about procrastination is coming from the before common era. Ancient Greak poet Hesoid was advising not to “put your work off until tomorrow and the day after.” Although the possibilities for procrastination are nowadays bigger, possibilities for what is called “productive procrastination” or “positive procrastination” or “structured procrastination” are greater too. The concept refers to delaying the activity that we have been working on but using this time for getting other things done. Online world may be a distraction but may also be a place where we can satisfy our interests. Productive procrastination blog is one of the examples I came across. It is an individual way of one student to use the “procrastination time” in a productive and structured manner – by learning about different topics she is interested by.

Furthermore, what is the way of compensating our education system drawbacks if not offering possibilities to nourish different interests? Technology has made it so easy. Many people have discovered their “dream jobs” while “not getting things done.”

Also, digital world has offered us many different tools that might be helpful when it comes to self-organization. Besides the regular ones such as digital calendars and planners, the great example is an app called Habitica which helps building wished habits in a motivating and gamified way. We cannot neglect that by having our phone with an internet access we are having our personal assistant too.

It is all about the perspective we take on living in a digital world. Isn’t it?