Division of Resources While Interacting with the Internet

Past the threat of interaction with particular target sites, the Gishwhesian Research Institute has successfully charted the patterns of time usage when subjects -- chosen from a wide range of social demographics -- are left to their own devices on the internet.

Each subject was tasked with a mid-level research project; they were to accumulate information on their chosen topic (something they were unfamiliar with, but which would not be overly taxing), and given two hours in which to complete their project. If they completed the task early, they were to notify the overseeing researcher, and the data collection would cease.


What became immediately apparent on conclusion of the data gathering stage was the significant pull of everything on the internet besides the subject's individual task. Even when consulting general encyclopedia sites like Wikipedia, their engagement with the site quickly moved from relevant research to chasing down only vaguely relevant, and then completely irrelevant links.

From there, the subjects moved on to other timewasting internet entertainments, including viewing cats on YouTube, Googling images of cats and perusing gifs of cats.

While this result appears to complicate our study, as cats may be seen as the underlying timewasting force, in our outlier subjects who avowed no interest in cats or kittens we still saw a similar pattern. Instead of cat videos, gifs and images, they were consumed with pictures of dogs, babies, or, in one notable case, funny videos of slightly moulding wedges of brie.

Even beyond pet, baby and cheese websites, these same subjects spent more time on other entertainment sites (including the IMDB) or internet-assisted creative endeavours (such as making charts for websites regarding the negative influence of the internet) than they did on their assigned tasks.

Initial mapping has shown that these patterns hold true even when applied to larger populations, although further study is underway.