Angry Birds costing businesses $1.5 billion in productivity loss

By Seth Brodeur
last updated

When Alex Madrigal, writer for The Atlantic, saw a report that said people play 200 million minutes of Angry Birds on smartphones every day, he decided to try to figure out what affect that had on business productivity.  Using the same methodology that consulting firms like Challenger, Gray, and Christmas use to find the affect such things as fantasy football and March Madness have on business costs, he put the admittedly unscientific numbers to work.  The results are staggering.

According to his humorous calculations, people playing Angry Birds at work costs American businesses over $1.5 billion in lost wages.  He estimates that 5% of the total minutes played are Americans at work and multiplied it by the annual salary of the average smartphone user.  Even though there are quite a few liberties taken with devising the numbers, as someone who is guilty of this infraction at work myself, I totally believe that Madrigal's not too far off.  But ask yourself this, if these people weren't busy playing Angry Birds, would they actually be spending that time working?  I don't think so.

Source: The Atlantic; Via: Business Insider

Seth Brodeur
Seth Brodeur
11 Comments
  • LMAO!! just e-mailed this article to every one at work!! HAHAHAHA this is brilliant.
  • Hilarious. I just spent 4 hours at work on a day last week trying to 3 star 2 levels. If I wasn't playing angry birds I would have been on the computer playing some flash game probably.
  • i always think its so stupid when there are studies or whatever claiming that x distraction costs y company millions or billions in lost productivity. as long as the task gets done, what does it matter? if an employee is full time, he gets his full pay right? he's not going to clock out and not get his day's wage just cause he finished his task before anyone else, *cough, me all to often, cough* if its an hourly free lance thing then the boss has every right to be pissed at wasted time.
  • I never play game at work...but I surf the web though. ;-)
  • Funny.. WPCentral.com costs my work more than Angry Birds.
  • Quick, someone make "Angry Bosses". A game where you fling irate employers/managers/execs at people in cubicles. :)
  • Jeez, which smartphone owners are making $35 an hour? It's sure as heck not me...
  • Seriously, I need to show this to my boss to "prove" I'm under the curve here...
  • That's hilarious, I was thinking the very same thing!
  • Of course, this assumes they wouldn't be playing a *good* game instead.;)
  • I'm with mjperez100. If we didn't take breaks, goof off, etc to release steam and, or relax then business productivity would be zero.We would all be farmers, fisherman, etc.I would like to ask Alex Madrigal how much does he feel he cost his employer by writing such nonsense.