Digital procrastination in secondary schools: triggers and enabling conditions

Youth spend a considerable amount of time every day surfing the internet, and some of the interest-driven activities are arguably educationally desirable (Ito, 2010; Buckingham, 2007). In an effort to capitalize on youth’s digital strengths, a growing number of schools offer open net-access. Digital procrastination, however, might undermine any educationally productive potential. In an effort to understand the generative mechanisms of digital procrastination, we explore in depth the factors that trigger and conditions that enable students’ digital procrastination in a Norwegian secondary school classroom with open internet access. Based on critical realist ontological and epistemological assumptions, we conducted a qualitatively driven, mixed methods sequential design consisting of a small-scale survey (N=108), classroom observations and focus-group interviews. The findings indicated five triggers (net-attraction, loss of subject matter task value, vicarious procrastination, transitions, perceived break entitlement) and six enabling conditions (extensive digital access, extensive student freedom, teacher abdication of responsibility, digital norms adjusted to students’ patterns of procrastination, student lack of self-regulatory strategies and efficacy). We argue that at the heart of digital procrastination lies the behavioral design of digital distractions that constantly offers and facilitates educationally debilitating behavior. Further, we categorized 50 students’ delay behaviors as either passive or active in relation to the degree of conscious planning and time management. Whereas passive procrastinators were more or less helpless victims of digital distractions’ behavioral design, active procrastinators were instrumental in their behaviors intent on maximization of utility. Implications for policy, practice, and further research is discussed.