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Digital distraction is a common phenomenon in e-reading contexts, and it is worth exploring in depth from the perspectives of information (digital content), users (readers) and technology (digital reading medium). Since screen reading has close links with multitasking and potential distraction, any investigation of reading in the digital environment must factor in this reality. This paper aims to investigate the extent and effects of digital distraction while reading on screens. Special emphases go to exploring multitasking while reading.

Survey and analysis methods are employed.

The extent of digital distraction among college students it found is alarming. All the top four sources of distraction are communication-based activities. Female students tend to concentrate more than males when they read on screens. An overwhelming majority of participants choose to read in print to reduce distractions and to concentrate effectively. Screen reading is inherently distracting, primarily due to multitasking. It appears that repeated multitasking during academic endeavors carries substantial costs.

Implications of digital distraction are discussed, and directions of future research are suggested.

This study examines the dualities of digital services – that is, how customers’ favorite everyday digital services can positively and negatively contribute to their well-being. Thus, the study describes the meanings of favorite digital services as part of customers’ everyday lives and the types of well-being to which such services can contribute.

We used a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021 to collect data from 14 young adults (22–31 years old) who actively used digital services in their daily lives.

Our findings revealed that customers’ favorite everyday digital services can contribute to their mental well-being, social well-being, and intellectual well-being. Within these three dimensions of well-being, we identified nine dualities of digital services that describe their positive and negative contributions: (1) digital escapism versus digital disruption, (2) digital relaxation versus digital stress, (3) digital empowerment versus digital subjugation, (4) digital augmentation versus digital emptiness, (5) digital socialization versus digital isolation, (6) digital togetherness versus digital exclusion, (7) digital self-expression versus digital pressure, (8) digital learning versus digital dependence, and (9) digital inspiration versus digital stagnation.

These findings suggest that everyday digital services have the potential to contribute to customer well-being in various aspects – both positively and negatively – accentuating the need for service providers to decipher the impacts of their offerings on well-being. Indeed, understanding the relationship between digital services and customer well-being can help companies tailor their services to customers’ needs. Companies that prioritize customer well-being not only benefit their customers but also create sustainable growth opportunities in the long run. Further, companies can use the derived information in service design to develop marketing strategies that emphasize the positive impacts of their digital services on customer well-being.

Although prior transformative service studies have investigated the well-being of multiple stakeholders, such studies have focused on services related to the physical and healthcare domains. Consequently, the role of everyday digital services as contributors to customer well-being is an under-researched topic. In addition, the concept of well-being and its various dimensions has received limited attention in previous service research. By investigating everyday digital services and their multidimensional contribution to customer well-being, this study broadens the perspective on well-being within TSR and aids in refining a more precise conceptualization.

The dominant worldview among marketers is one of technology optimism, which holds that technological advances influence consumers and businesses in positive ways. In direct contrast to this perspective, I advance the thesis that at the organizational frontlines where marketers interact with consumers by observing, informing, persuading, negotiating and co-creating with, and entertaining them, technology commonly produces unforeseen and unexpected effects on consumers with significant negative implications for marketers. The result is Adverse Technology-Consumer Interactions (ATCIs). Marketing practitioners play an instrumental role in producing and exacerbating ATCIs. Yet, I argue they have few incentives to fully investigate the underlying reasons, understand their scope, or find solutions to these potentially troublesome phenomena. Academic researchers, however, are uniquely poised to identify ATCIs, investigate them in depth by considering their industry-wide and society-wide import, develop appropriate theoretical frameworks, and design and test solutions to alleviate their effects. I develop these ideas by considering two ATCIs, falling response rates to customer surveys and customer reactance to frequent price changes. I also point out promising research opportunities for both these phenomena.

As digital devices (e.g., laptops, tablets) have become increasingly ubiquitous, so too has students’ potential for digital distraction. It is yet unknown how teachers and schools might effectively handle such challenges. Accordingly, this study explores educators’ encounters with digital distraction among students, including their work toward addressing the problem.

This mixed-methods case study drew upon interview and survey data. Data were analyzed to describe educators’ encounters with and problem solving around digital distraction. This included the use of social network analysis. Specifically, a core-periphery model helped illuminate patterns in collaborative problem solving.

Students’ distractions included online entertainment and sending messages. This added to an overall atmosphere of distractedness in classrooms. Rather than collaborate around digital distraction, teachers tended to handle these issues on their own. If teachers did talk to others, these instances were more likely complaints to leaders than peer-to-peer collaborations.

This study provides a descriptive account of one school and its problem solving around digital distraction. Building upon this study, future research might address the effectiveness of approaches for handling distraction, the influence of network structures on problem solving, and the factors influencing educators’ collaboration around technology.

Digital distraction is a new challenge in schools and in society. This study lays groundwork for understanding and addressing this issue. It also demonstrates one way to apply core-periphery analyses toward understanding problem solving.

The study examines the impact of social media distraction on the relationship between student engagement and student evaluations of teachers (SET) in management education, part of the STEM disciplines. While it is widely accepted that student engagement and evaluation of teachers are two important constructs of active learning systems, their links, especially in the context of management education, have not been explored. This study seeks to fill this research gap as teachers' appraisal and career growth greatly depend on SET across higher education institutes worldwide.

Data were collected from 247 student participants from higher education institutes/universities using a questionnaire-based survey. Further, 15 students were interviewed to glean insights from their feelings regarding social media distractions and how it impacts their engagement and evaluation of teachers. For the quantitative and qualitative analyses, multiple regression and thematic analysis were applied, respectively. A word tree was developed to determine the association between experiences and contexts.

The results indicate that social media distraction moderates the relationship between students' cognitive engagement and their evaluation of teaching faculty. Social media distractions disrupt student engagement inside the classroom, leading to wrong/biased assessments of teachers' performance. Additionally, cognitive and emotional engagement significantly impacted student evaluations of the management college faculty.

The authors’ findings enable educators in higher education systems, specifically management education, to rethink the faculty feedback system and social media distractions impeding student engagement other than SET drawbacks.

The prevalence of digital reading and the widespread use of social media among young people demands systematic exploration of the effects of social media addiction on students' reading practice. This paper aims to explore the effects of social media addiction on reading preferences, in-depth reading and sustained attention.

Survey and analysis methods are employed.

For many, social media provides an ideal platform of connection and expression; however, prolonged social media use holds the danger of becoming a behavioral addiction that threatens to undermine one's reading practice. Social media use tends to have a more significant impact on leisure reading than on academic reading. Obsessive engagement with social media hurts reading concentration and in-depth reading. While a majority (70.4%) of those surveyed believed that chronic social media use carries more harm than good on their learning, only half (50.1%) agreed or strongly agreed that today's students are too indulged in social media and need forceful control of it.

Implications of the effects of social media on reading practice are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested. It is likely that social media will continue to be seductive, attracting new generations of young people. Future research should explore prevention strategies.

This chapter examines how increased digitalisation shapes employee voice behaviour through informal digital channels. A growing body of literature found positive effects of employee voice on organisational outcomes, and companies are offering various formal and informal channels for employees to speak up. However, despite the vast literature on employee voice, research on the role of the voice channel is limited. With digital voice channels gaining popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating how the interaction of employees with communication technologies affects their willingness to speak up digitally is ever more important. To do so, the authors chose a qualitative research design with semi-structured interviews. Adaptive structuration theory (AST) guided the qualitative content analysis. Findings indicate that the shift from analogue to digital informal voice channels influences employees’ willingness to speak up. Despite an effort to mimic analogue face-to-face conversations through advanced technologies, employees perceive a missing spark when communicating digitally, which discourages them from speaking up through informal digital channels. In this chapter, the authors analyse which factors constitute the missing spark.

The purpose of this study is to pilot test the effectiveness of the experience sampling approach for measuring employee satisfaction with the workplace environment. Additionally, the authors also aimed to explore, which aspects of environmental comfort have the strongest impact on momentary well-being and productivity.

In total, 15 knowledge workers in an open-plan office environment were sent a brief survey (measuring environmental comfort, momentary well-being and perceived productivity) each day over an 11-day study period and provided 78 individual survey responses in total.

All but one of the measures on the survey had low test-retest reliability, indicating that employees’ experiences of environmental comfort varied significantly each time they completed the survey. Additionally, higher environmental comfort was associated with improved well-being and productivity.

The results suggest that an experience sampling approach to the workplace occupant survey is justified to better capture the temporal variability in experiences of environmental comfort. The results also suggest that improving environmental comfort, particularly by reducing the level of distractions, will enable employees to work more productively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first field study which has attempted to directly address limitations in traditional occupant surveys by using an experience sampling approach rather than a one-time-only questionnaire.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) use and work performance during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Specifically, it aims to understand what the role of task–technology fit is, and what effect this has on feelings of loneliness of individuals and their subsequent work performance. As a large proportion of workers are required to work from home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, understanding what aspects contribute to higher performance and reduced negative psychological outcomes is of increased practical and research interest.

To explore these questions, a quantitative approach that employed a sample population of 357 individuals who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic was used. Using a convenience, purposive and snowball sampling approach the authors collected data through a custom-built online questionnaire, and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results highlight the effect that high task–technology fit has in both directly and indirectly influencing work performance of individuals. The authors find that by designing ICTs based on task–technology fit principles, individuals are less likely to experience feelings of loneliness while working from home and are more prone to perform better in their work-related tasks.

This study offers a new perspective on the role fit of tasks with technology have on influencing psychological states, and indirectly influencing work-related outcomes. The authors, therefore, expand the understanding about why task–technology fit is sought after by explaining part of the psychological mechanisms through which it has an effect on work performance.