Exploring the positive side of personal internet use at work: Does it help in managing the border between work and nonwork?

• We focus on the question of whether using the internet at work has positive aspects.
• Employees with many nonwork demands used the internet more often for private reasons.
• Personal internet use was not correlated with work–nonwork balance.
• The guiding work/family border theory was only partially supported.

Many employees use the internet at work for personal reasons, and it has been suggested that this behavior can be understood as an attempt to manage the border between work and nonwork. Using data from 190 office workers, the study aims to test how well work/family border theory can explain personal internet use. The results only partly support work/family border theory, as only the amount of private demands and identification with work at work were significant predictors of personal internet use (which was found to be unrelated to work–nonwork balance). These findings suggest that work/family border theory offers only a limited perspective for the explanation of why people use the internet at work for personal business.