Social networking, email more addictive than smoking, drinking: Study

Love reading your email or checking your Twitter feed? You might be surprised at how much you rely on it.

Many of us have joked about being addicted to checking email on our mobile phone – anyone remember when BlackBerrys were called CrackBerrys? – and now a U.S. experiment confirms how hard it can be to resist the inbox.

The findings from the study show that email and social networking sites like Twitter may be more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol.

In an article for The Guardian, writer James Meikle says a team of researchers led by Chicago University’s Booth Business School used BlackBerrys to gauge the willpower of 205 people (age 18 to 85) in the German city of Würtzburg.

Over a period of 14 hours a day, for seven days, participants were required to indicate when they were experiencing a desire, for what, the strength (from mild to irresistible), if it conflicted with other desires, and whether they resisted or succumbed to it.

Out of 10,558 registered responses, 7,827 of them were “desire episodes” reported – with more of them tied to tweeting and email than other strong temptations, such as cigarettes, alcohol and coffee.

Believe it or not.

The only urges stronger than social media fixes and checking email? Sleep, sex and leisure.

The researchers suggest the desire for social media and email may be harder to resist because of high availability — plus it doesn’t “cost much” to engage in these activities, compared to most other urges.

That is, Twitter doesn’t cause cancer and email doesn’t cost the same amount as a rye and ginger.

Willpower was also found to wane as the day wore on, which could also impact how easily we give into urges.

The results of the study will be published in the journal Psychological Science.

Sync readers, are you surprised by these findings? Would you say you have a stronger urge to tweet or read email over smoking a cigarette or having a drink?

[On February 8, as part of Let's Talk Day, Bell will be donating 5 cents for every text message and long-distance call to mental health research which will hopefully find new treatments to combat addiction - Ed.]

Disclosure: Sync is owned and operated by Bell Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of BCE, parent company of Bell Canada.