Twitter more addictive than cigarettes

#psychological_study reveals we simply cannot resist social media

A psychological study into willpower has found that resisting tweeting or checking emails is harder than resisting cigarettes or alcohol. Sex and sleep are the most powerful urges people can experience. However, people are far more likely to give in to the cravings of social media.

A German study of 205 people aged between 18 and 85 is the first of its kind, the results soon to be published in the prestigious journal of Psychological Science.
The study group were signalled 7 times a day for 7 days and were expected to reply whether they had experienced a desire in the last 30 minutes, including the nature and strength of that desire. Of the 10,000 responses, almost 8,000 were desire episodes.

Wilhelm Hoffman, leader of the research team, explained: “Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success”. As sleep is seemingly the most powerful desire, the conflicting desire for leisure seems to suggest many of the subjects experienced tension.

Interestingly, as the day wore on, willpower declined. As work desires lowered, spending and sexual impulses soared, with very few reported urges for cigarettes, coffee or alcohol in a direct affront to the stereotypical concept of addiction.

As the research team stated: “Resisting the desire to work when it conflicts with other goals such as socialising or leisure activities may be difficult because work can define people’s identities, dictate many aspects of daily life, and invoke penalties if important duties are shirked.”

The team suggested that the desire for engaging in social media was so difficult to resist due to the readily available nature of the vice and the fact that such little cost is required to indulge in them, unlike costly addictions like smoking or drinking. We can also kid ourselves that popping on twitter is far more innocent as a time-waster than other addictions.

Hofmann added: “We made clear to participants that answering their BlackBerrys did not count. Also people really did not feel a desire to use them – they only beeped once in a while and, if anything, that was more annoying than pleasing, I guess. And there was nothing else they could use the devices for.”