Do you feel like your cravings for Facebook is more than alcohol or tobacco?
A new study from the University of Chicago found that the urges to check social media and work were the harder to resist than sleep and sex, alcohol, or tobacco.
A team led by Wilhelm Hofmann at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business carried out the study. Subjects aged 18-85 in Wurtzburg, Germany were given blackberries to monitor their carvings for social media.
The researchers sent messages to the subjects seven times over 14 hours a day for seven days, asking them if they were experiencing or had the urge within the last 30 minutes to check social media, what type it was, the strength of it, whether it conflicted with other desires, and whether they resisted or went along with it. 10,558 responses and 7,827 “desire episodes” were reported.
The researchers found that as the day went by, willpower became lower. The highest “self-control failure rates” were reported with social media, and the desire to work. The subjects were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, and the level of desire for alcohol, tobacco, and coffee were much lower despite their addictive properties.
It is relatively difficult to resist the urges to check social media because they are useful and cost nearly nothing, Hoffmann said.
“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 researchers told the Guardain.
Resisting a particular urge frequently or recently sap a persons’ willpower, making it easier to cave in the next time.
The full result of the study will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science.
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