We all have compulsively clicked on 'Refresh' tab on our Facebook page, but now a study has officially confirmed that Facebook, along with Twitter, is even more addictive than alcohol and cigarettes. According to researchers from University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, most of us mere mortals are unable to resist the urge of visiting social networking sites.
The study was conducted on 205 subjects in Germany. These people were asked to report about their 'desire' to visit Facebook and Twitter and whether they were able to resist the urge. They were also asked to quantify their 'desire' on a scale ranging from mild to 'irresistible'. During the span of seven days, total 10,558 responses were collected and out of these, 7,827 responses belonged to 'desire episodes'. If you are worried over the results, then you can take solace in study group leader's statement. Wilhelm Hofmann stated that people succumb to these desire episodes because there is no apparent downside. However, he also warned that ultimately such urges may lead to huge waste of time.
Hofmann stated, "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."
