If a new study carried out by the Journal of Psychological Science is to be believed, then logging into Facebook and Twitter might be just about the most addictive thing in the world.
Researchers provided 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85 in the city of Wurtzburg, Germany, with BlackBerry phones and monitored them for seven straight days. Seven times a day, all of the researchers were asked to send a message asking what sort of urges they’d experienced in the previous thirty minutes – and how they reacted to them.
The results showed that while people do like a beer, a crafty cigarette or the odd sexual encounter, it’s the draw of Twitter and Facebook that they find truly irresistible. Especially as their reserves of willpower start to dwindle throughout the day.
However, Head Researcher Wilhelm Hofmann does have a theory that doesn’t equate to 140 character messages being internet heroin. Instead, he’s fairly sure that this is down to the fact that in a workplace environment, it’s difficult to get a gin and tonic, ten cigarettes and a quick fumble with someone attractive. But it is incredibly easy to log into Twitter when some kind researcher has given you a free smartphone packed to the gills with social media apps.
But that simple explanation hasn’t stopped some people from claiming that social media might be just as harmful as other addictions such as gambling and smoking:
“There’s also the argument to be made that social media is just as harmful, forcing someone to recede from the world and into a safe little bubble of status updates and tweets, where human beings aren’t troublesome animals but easily compartmentalized profiles.
But it’s a little easier to make the harm argument with cigarettes.”
David Thier – Forbes Magazine
If the research findings aren’t influenced by giving people easy access to the web, and social media is incredibly addictive, then why can’t Google+ get users to stick around?
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Facebook is more addictive than sex, booze, cigarettes, and drugs combined!