Slashdot Mirror
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."
...is what my mom told me about alcohol and tobacco.
also, checking constantly to see if anybody replied to my slashdot posts. also, looking for new articles to claim frist! addictive.
Does this mean that social media will now be the blame for all the evils of society? Finally replacing D&D, and "violent video games."
Om, nomnomnom...
Back when I waited tables in a restaurants to pay for college, I can promise you me and the other servers were not taking Facebook breaks outside the back door.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I can not press "submit" on this post. Really. I *can* not press submit. Really I can....
Tax social media to the extent they tax alcohol and tobacco and then see how easy it is to give up.
... don't join:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6611967/not-google-plus
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.
Governments have been taxing alcohol for centuries and tobacco for decades and it hasn't stopped people from using either one of them. Anybody who thinks that taxing something that people like is going to make them stop must be suffering from the Bullwinkle Syndrome.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The Social Media Twelve Steps
We admitted we were powerless over social media - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a better broadband connection can restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a All Knowing Server Admin as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless inventory of our posts.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our spulling erroz.
Were entirely ready to have The Next Thing Better Than Facebook remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Customer Service to remove our drunken posts.
Made a list of all persons we have stalked, and became willing to block them all.
Avoided making direct amends to such people wherever possible because it pretty much looks like even more stalking.
Continued to hide our personal baggage and when we were wrong to rise above the desire to ragequit.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with cute kittens as we understood Them, praying only for the power to not forward it.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to social media addicts, and to practice these principles in all our status updates.
Ha! I don't drink smoke or do any drugs or have a face book account! I am immune to such temptations! muhahaha.
So sleeping is an addicting activity and anyone doing is just giving into a base desire?
Don't know why this study did not include breathing, I know some air addicts that cannot stop breathing for more then a minute. They are so addicted they even do it in their sleep.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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?
/. is an addiction.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Sleep is pretty hard to resist. If you don't do it, you die.
Not really the same as cigarettes?
..don't panic
It's a money game, not politicians trying to help people.
As a douchebag politician you get to stand in front of everyone with a straight face and say it's because those vices are bad for you and you want to discourage it. What you're really doing is using addictions to collect massive amounts of revenue. Even better, nobody can argue with you, or they're some monster supporting alcohol and nicotine addiction.
This is why a $3 pack of cigarettes in a major city can cost $12, while people still smoke.
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.
Underwear beat a city? WTF?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Now I really want a drink and a smoke.
But then I went on Facebook to share the message, and suffered a relapse. Oh and I had to go harvest my farm as well.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
A sin tax error...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
Correlation does not imply causation. The smokers and drinkers among the working poor fuck themselves.
Targeting one group is not an implicit targeting of another, loosely correlated, group. To suggest that sin taxes are taxes on the working poor is to suggest that either (1) the working poor are predisposed to smoking, drinking and gambling; or (2) that smokers, drinkers and gamblers are predisposed to being poor.
A tax on cell phone service is not a tax on cancer patients; tough on drugs is not tough on black people; preventing people from making a mess in a public park is not preventing people from exercising free speech; and requesting picture ID at a poling place is not requesting that the poor stay home on election day.
Yeah, sweet old dihydrogenmonoxide. My favorite addiction. I never tried to stop, because I heard such horror stories. Better to continue until death. Luckily my emplyer allows me to get my fix at work.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
This is along the same lines as the claims that tobacco is more addictive than heroin. It's not a fair comparison. The desire for a serious drug is offset by the immediate and serious side effects, so people have a stronger incentive to resist. Indulging in a lesser drug has fewer immediate down sides. Indulging in social media has little to no adverse effects. A much better way to compare addictiveness would be to compare the effects of withdrawal.