The University of Chicago Booth School of Business operating in Germany conducted a study that has found that the desire to check social media networks like Twitter and Facebook is stronger than the desire for sex. The age range stemmed from 18 to 85, and those who participated in the poll, which took place over a week, felt that it was harder to resist using their smartphones. “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,” Wilhelm Hofmann, the study’s lead author, told the Los Angeles Times.
The poll reported that the need to check tweets, pictures, comments and other posts was stronger than the desire for sex and cigarettes in terms of temptation. The findings will soon be published in the journal “Psychological Science.” Participants were texted seven times a day over 14 hours for a week and asked to describe what kinds of cravings they were having at the moment as well as any urges they’d had in the last 30 minutes. Study participants were also asked to rank their appetites for cigarettes and alcohol.
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