A healthcare consultant asked me last week what I did for a living while at a networking session on Atlanta’s Northside.

I handed him my card, and he immediately went into recounting the many ways social media adversely affect worker productivity. Others quickly agreed. The consultant told stories about a doctor leaving the operating room to use Twitter, office workers wasting time and other horror stories. I politely didn’t ask how he knew the doctor was on Twitter and not texting buddies to set up a tee time. (Not that texting is justified, either.)

I heard similar concerns the next morning from more business people at another gathering. Ironically, when I got home, the first online article I spotted focused on statistics from ScanSafe showing that 76% of companies are choosing to block social networking in the workplace, more than for online shopping, weapons sites or porn.

It gets worse. I then stumbled upon a report by Boston-based Nucleus Research, a company involved in IT research. In late July, Nucleus released “Facebook: Measuring the Cost to Business of Social Notworking.” (A salute to whoever at Nucleus wrote that clever headline.) The Nucleus report concludes:

“Companies that let employees access Facebook during work hours can expect to see total office productivity decline by an average of 1.5%.”

Looking further into the report I found such details as these:

“Those who access Facebook at work do so for an average of 15 minutes daily, with the range as low as one minute and as high as 120 minutes.”

Or, gasp!

“One in every 33 created their entire Facebook profile during work hours.”

So how does this social media advocate respond to these alarming developments? With common sense perspective.

Let’s travel back in time, shall we, to the invention of the World Wide Web. Eventually, computers with browsers invaded the workplace. Why? Because the business world was going online and using online tools was good for business. Same with e-mail. Most companies learned after years of restrictive company communications policies that there was a middle ground for what types of sites were appropriate for the workplace. Most companies now know that users want to be online first thing at work, around lunch and right before they go home.

Now here we are, moving beyond the early adopters of social media into the mainstream. Facebook, of course, is experiencing phenomenal growth among those 35 and up (and 55 and up). Just as companies once wrestled with Web browsers and e-mail, many now don’t know what to make of Facebook.

What the naysayers — and many in the business world — are missing is the shift in online behavior. People now spend more time on social networking sites than they do on e-mail. More and more, friends are suggesting to friends what sports stories to read, music to listen to, or products to buy. Social networking sites are rapidly becoming the portal through which consumers find what they want. Facebook apparently wants to aggregate all that content from all your social media. (See Aug. 16 post.) So the time spent on social sites is supplanting much of that time that used to be spent surfing online or e-mailing.

So it’s not that workers are wasting more time through social media. Wasting time in the office is an established American tradition. So the “15 minutes a day” on Facebook is hardly going to reduce the Gross National Product. That is 15 minutes interacting with friends online, instead of 15 minutes or more scouring stocks, sports scores, recipes or whetever workers used to look for. Or it’s 15 minutes not chatting in the break room or office cafeteria. It’s possible that 15 minutes on Facebook may be a time savings for many Web-savvy workers.

And, evidently, that 15 minutes probably is a good thing for your business resume.´ As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently reported in a widely circulated feature, more and more companies are now requiring social media skills for many positions.

Granted, there are people spending too much time on social media, just as others 10 years ago spent too much time surfing the Web, or using AIM. I’m old enough to remember people who spent the entire morning pouring over every word in a newspaper sports section, or checking their stocks. Those who are non-productive in the workplace are obvious, whether they are addicted to Twitter or online puzzles. Why should companies spoil it for everyone else?

Now I need to finish this post, so I can get back to work. My Facebook business page awaits.