Study: Social Media More Addictive Than Alcohol & Tobacco
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Imagine a world without Facebook, Twitter, or text messages.
If it's a nightmarish thought, you're like most people aged 18-25 who are hopelessly addicted to something worse than alcohol or tobacco.
According to a new study from the University of Chicago, text messaging and checking Facebook and Twitter are just behind sex and sleep on the list of urges that are basically impossible to resist.
In the study, researchers gave BlackBerrys to more than 200 people and then sent the people back out into their normal daily lives.
The researchers would message them seven times over 14 hours asking if they wanted to look at Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The researchers said out of 10,558 messages, 7,827 reported urges to check social media.
Researchers later discovered through interviews that many of the subjects were willing to forgo most other cravings except sex and sleep to check social media.
A separate study, according to pcmag.com, reported that people with low self-esteem could be at more risk if they use Facebook.
The self-esteem study found that people with low self-esteem posted negative items and that made them appear less likable to their friends.
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