With all of the status updates, new photos, event invitations and hilarious comments, there is constantly new information to catch up on and use to avoid doing anything and everything required for schoolwork. 

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, it has been a key cause of procrastinating post-secondary students everywhere. As more people sign up for Facebook every day, the newsfeed on the page becomes more like an irresistible circle that never ends, and becomes almost impossible to walk away from when real work needs to be done.

With all of the status updates, new photos, event invitations and hilarious comments, there is constantly new information to catch up on and use to avoid doing anything and everything required for schoolwork.

Since Facebook’s launch, many other websites have cropped up to compete for your procrastinating tendencies. Twitter, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Tumblr and many more offer an endless stream of entertaining distractions that last indefinitely.

While most students use the websites as a way to postpone the work they have to do, first-year animation student Evan Martin browses websites like Tumblr for ideas that can sometimes relate to her studies.

“I like to look at other people’s art and photography,” she says. “[The sites] are good places for inspiration sometimes.”

While social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter offer many hours of distraction to users, you eventually catch up on all your friends’ recent news, photos, and status updates, and get tired of waiting for a new tweet to appear.

That’s when sites like Tumblr and Pinterest come into play.

They offer something that blogs and news sites can’t – they have millions of contributors so the content is changing every second.

While most traditional blogs have usually one new post every day or so, and news sites provide a great deal of current news and updates, they are meant to be used to find the information you need or to read the news of the day and move on with your life.

With Tumblr, Pinterest, and other sites like them, there is a constant stream of new information, posts, photos, pins, updates and more.

You tell yourself you will refresh the page just one more time, but there are so many things being added to these sites every second that it becomes a challenge to close the browser and get to work.

The last Internet hotspot worth mentioning for its ability to make valuable time fly by is YouTube. An irresistible source of endless video content that provides users the opportunity to browse content and upload their own. Martin often cruises the web for student-made videos.

“I watch a lot of shorts and student films I probably wouldn't see otherwise,” says Martin.

The latest development in this world of constant procrastination is website applications for smartphones. Now Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and all the rest are available in your pocket 24-hours-a-day. This can make them even more of an obsession than before since every free moment can be used to catch up on the latest updates; moments that could have been used to finish a project or study for an exam.

These are just a few of the millions of websites waiting and willing to turn your five minute study break into a four hour long browsing marathon. Make sure you know your priorities before you get lured into pulling an all-nighter for an assignment that should have taken an hour or less.