You’re All More Addicted To Twitter And Email Than You Are To Sex And Booze

Studies Show

You’re All More Addicted To Twitter And Email Than You Are To Sex And Booze

5:23 pm, February 3rd | by Hillary Reinsberg

It’s hard to resist hitting the bottle after a long day at work or splurging at the department store, but it’s even harder to not check your email, a study has shown. “Twitter is harder to resist than drinking and sex!” media outlets are crying out. Here’s why we’re not exactly surprised.

The research here, as reported by The Guardian, involved a group of people in Germany who were told to record their urges for various things throughout the day — from media to sex to wanting to play sports. (Sports? Really? Must. Play. Football. Now.). Overall, they found people had the hardest time resisting urges to use media. As The Guardian explains:

The researchers found that as the day wore on, willpower became lower. Their paper says highest “self-control failure rates” were recorded with media. “Resisting the desire to work was likewise prone to fail. In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money.”

So, a few things on this. First, consumption of media is not, to the best of my understanding, considered a vice in the way that overspending or drinking are. Media’s a highly essential part of society. But you knew that, didn’t you?! Would you have a job, friends, contact with your family without email? Would you be as informed as you are without Twitter? Texting, tweeting, and emailing aren’t “urges” — they’re societal norms. If you don’t respond to an email, people get worried. Or they’re at least irritated. In the highly developed world we’re talking about here, you essentially have to do these things. You don’t have to drink, play sports, or splurge with your money. Whether you have to have sex is a matter we won’t get into here.

Look — it’s still not polite to check your Twitter while you’re sitting at your Grandmother’s birthday dinner, and you probably don’t need to check your BlackBerry for emails every five seconds. Every five minutes would probably be fine. But tweeting and emailing and reading the news aren’t exactly “urges” that we need to try to resist.

TAGS: addicted to email | addicted to twitter | twitter addiction