Facebook, Twitter more addictive than alcohol, tobacco

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-twitter-more-addictive-than-alcohol-tobacco/8530

by Slimy • 14 years ago

23 15 14 years ago

StavrosK2• 14 years ago

Meanwhile, breathing continues to top the list of addictions, with 100% of test subjects unable to desist for any appreciable amount of time in studies performed.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

If you didn't need to breath to stay alive (aka a biological need) it would certainly be an addiction.

StavrosK2• 14 years ago

It's only an addiction when it's harmful.

justncase802• 14 years ago

Followed closely by interacting with other people. Who knew?

barnaby• 14 years ago

So then could Reddit and HN be considered more addictive than Heroin?

In all seriousness.

aresant• 14 years ago

The net waste & damage from unbridled access to social networks, online content, "social games", porn, etc is going to be the subject of many a sociologist of the future, have to wonder where it's taking us.

Paul Graham's "Acceleration of Addictiveness" is a great primer on the subject, and he sums up beautifully that the iPad is the "hip flask" of digital addiction:

http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

tomjen32• 14 years ago

Why did you put porn in there? There are plenty of porn users (most males with access to the internet) but very few of them are addicts (in the sense that they can't function correctly without it not in the sense that they keep using it regulary because they enjoy it). Facebook, or even hn, is far more addictive.

salemh• 14 years ago

Do people become nonfunctional via HN / FB over Pornography? Sex addicts ~3-5% of populace, harder to narrow down to nonfunctional stats. "There are plenty of HN / FB users but few are addicts (in the sense that they can't function correctly without it not in the sense that they keep using it regularly because they enjoy it). "Far more addictive" is a strong and weird statement.

GOOG search:3-6% social media. http://cybercrimenews.norton.com/articles/social_media_addic...

Higher % to support your statement: "Is Generation Y Addicted to Social Media?" https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:IWRpW7Mg81gJ:...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=...

http://www.myaddiction.com/education/articles/sex_statistics...

udp• 14 years ago

Great, another almost content-free article with a link bait title. Can we start submitting/upvoting interesting things instead, please?

railsmax• 14 years ago

I think not only twitter, facebook, etc, etc... - but the whole sphere of entertainment in internet is like a drug! because what is drugs ??? - substances that give us the opportunity to provide endorphins - happy hormones. And we live for this.

zacharyvoase• 14 years ago

1) "205 participants between the ages of 18 and 85 with BlackBerry devices in and around the German city of Würtzburg" -- ridiculous selection bias.

2) "the participants were asked to message whether they were experiencing a desire at that moment or had experienced one within the last 30 minutes, what type it was, the strength of it, whether it conflicted with other desires, and whether they resisted or went along with it." -- volunteer bias (the desires and outcomes reported are exactly that: reported).

It looks to me like a case of a researcher using a heavily-biased study to project their views onto society at large, using a small sample and totally untrustworthy data.

jasonabelli• 14 years ago

I spend more time on hacker news. I get scared I'm going to miss an interesting tidbit.

rjd• 14 years ago

I'll call bull shit on this. Its a great temptation to check it when its just there. I check mine a lot.

But when I'm busy I can easily go an entire week without missing it. I spend easily 80 hours per average week on a computer so I guess I'd be in the upper thresholds of users out there.

I recently spent a month in thailand which included a fortnight without power, did I miss the internet? not really, only in the evenings when I realised I was't tired and there wasn't anything else to do. If anything the amount of entertainment I expect has increased but nothing else. Perhaps an emotional dependancy thats easily placated by other mediums.

But not addiction, theres no physical dependancy, no withdrawals, you aren't going to go into shock and cold sweats from missing out on twitter after 24 hours. I sure as hell don't get a stress headache like when I haven't had a coffee in a few days...

justncase802• 14 years ago

Personal anecdotes do little to sway statistical significance.

Facebook, Twitter more addictive than alcohol, tobacco

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