According to a survey by Assocham (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India), an average corporate employee in India spends an hour every day on social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace for personal use during the office hours, leading to a loss of about 12.5 per cent of employees’ productivity in the country’s corporate sector.

An interesting finding of the survey states that 73 per cent of corporate employees aged 45-58 spend over an hour online daily to use online sources to access news. The survey further reveals that 84 per cent of internet users in metropolitan cities show signs of internet addiction -- they don’t take breaks and can get irritable if they are interrupted while surfing.

It was also found that 19 per cent of companies allow use of social networking sites only for business purposes, while 16 per cent allow their limited personal use. Only 40 per cent of the employees interviewed said their companies allow employees full access to social networking sites during work hours.

According to Assocham, the findings are based on a survey of about 4,000 corporate employees in the age group 21-60 years in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow and Kanpur. The survey was conducted by Assocham Social Development Foundation (ASDF) during September-November 2009.