Study: Social media highly addictive

DAILY DOT COM - A new study suggests that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn are more difficult to resist than alcohol or cigarettes.

A team from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently conducted an experiment in Germany to analyze the addictive properties of social media and other vices.

A total of 205 people, ages 18-85, participated in the study.  They were polled via Blackberry smartphones seven times per day and asked to report when they felt a desire within the past 30 minutes, how strong it was and whether they succumbed to that desire.  

According to the study, which will be published in the Psychological Science Journal, 10,558 responses were recorded and a total of 7,827 “desire” episodes were reported by participants.

The lead researcher, Wilhelm Hofmann, reports that the desires for social media may be comparatively harder to resist because of the high availability and low costs.  “With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs –long term as well as monetary –and the opportunity may not always be the right one.  So even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time,” said Hofmann.