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Study Finds Social Media Harder To Resist Than Cigarettes, Alcohol
An anonymous reader writes "Checking a Twitter, Facebook or email account for updates may be more tempting than alcohol and cigarettes, according to researchers who tried to measure how well people regulate their daily desires. Researchers also found that while sleep and sex may be stronger urges than certain drug addictions, people are more likely to give in to their addiction to use social or other types of media."
The pretense behind this study seems rather shallow. "Social media" is really nothing more than a way for people to keep in touch with friends and family. I can go to ONE website and see how my daughter, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends are doing. It's very convenient. And yes, I check it throughout the day. If that's an "addiction", it's a pretty good one to have.
Do people generally view social media as more destructive than other addictions such as cigarettes or alcohol? Some may regulate their addictions to cigarettes or alcohol because of their destructive effects on health or general productivity. Does the overall decrease in productivity from social media such as facebook, youtube, or twitter count for more than the decrease in productivity from drinking or smoke breaks? What about the effects of liver/lung damage?
After using Facebook for 3 years I recently deleted my account.
They require you to wait 14 days before the actual cancellation takes place, maybe most people who try to resist to the temptation to use FB are felled by this grace period.
It obviously acts as a secure way to make deletions, in case someones account is hacked, but still.
Anywhere retail related where I've worked in the past six years had employees always using their phones to do that. The manager at a fast food place I worked for had his phone attached to a charger and would constantly check his texts and FB while doing stuff like slicing onions. One of the girls working there would always be using her phone for the same purpose as well as taking cigarette breaks outside the back door. From that alone, I'd say some people have an addiction problem to social media.
Does this mean that social media will now be the blame for all the evils of society?
That's been done so much its a laughable cliche now... kind of like we laughed at them blaming DnD and video games but they just continued to babble it for years after most people laughed at them.
Check out any stereotypical "cops n robbers" night time drama where the bad guy did something bad to the victim after doing some kind of social media thing, the message being FB is dangerous but watching our TV show is both safe, entertaining, and makes you superior to being a victim and you get to blame the victim for "doing the wrong thing" (not watching TV addictively). Check out any stereotypical daytime talk show (the now retired Oprah must have done 100 shows about this, also see her buddy Dr Phil) with endless hour long explanations of how their unstable kid/husband/housepet/whatever would never have gone over the edge if it were not for FB/twitter/etc. A decade ago they would have gone over the edge due to video games, a decade before that due to DnD, a decade before that due to Elvis's hips or something.
Its such a tired cliche, and so much of the audience is already addicted, that now they aggressively support twitter / FB. It would make an interesting google ngram graph, were such a thing possible, to graph daytime talk shows with one line being "social media scare stories" and the other line being "FB and twitter product placement / social media self promotional links".
Its an interesting model for other activities. Once you get around 50% of the population to smoke weed, then suddenly, in a matter of weeks, Oprah/Dr Phil/CSI will phase shift from weed being the root of all evil to it being the greatest thing on earth and why not try our celebrity branded strain...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger