Facebook & Twitter More Addictive than Alcohol?

Social media is indeed very addictive. This generation (Y) feels the need to constantly be plugged in. It’s hard for people to resist the urge to check social networking sites for updates, it seems more difficult than turning down a drink nowadays. You would think the top two things the young generation long for during the day is sleep and sex, But, social networks are the hardest to resist. 

According to a new research on people’s daily struggles withself-control and desire, Facebook and Twitter are harder to resist than alcohol and cigarettes.  The findings explore the thin line between self-discipline and addiction. The researchers gave BlackBerrys to 205 adults and signaled them seven times a day at randomly selected daytime hours for one week. When they were contacted the participants reported whether they were experiencing any desires or urges for something and what it was they yearned for.

The majority of the reports proved that some felt strong desires for sex and sleep but cravings for cigarettes and alcohol were unexpectedly low. But in terms of behavior the participants had the hardest time refraining from checking social media when they preferred not to, and from working.

When you think of an addiction, one may think of it as being located in a substance or perhaps an activity and displaces everything else. In this special case, an addictive drug is viewed as changing the brain to make it unable to resist social media. However, addiction is a matter of imbalance between your personal desire to engage in the addictive behavior and your conflicting desire to avoid the negative consequence of the said behavior.

The participants in the BlackBerry research were mostly college students and employed people between the ages from 18-55. Aha! So, it’s evident that the younger generation fall victim to the unhealthy addiction of social media.  

A co-author, Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University said:

“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist. 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.”

All in all, social media is harder to resist because it’s easily accessible and doesn’t cost much like other addictions such as alcoholic beverages. When the opportunity presents itself which is often, people are checking their phones to be constantly updated.


Below are interesting results signifying how addictive Facebook and Twitter are:

How often do you check or update your Facebook or Twitter? Do you check it after you go to bed...?