How much Twitter is too much? Biz Stone, Twitter cofounder, thinks maybe 12 hours a day might be a bit obsessive, says an article in The Guardian.
When Stone spoke to the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal's business conference, he suggested people should go to Twitter for the information
they need and leave once they've found it or learned something.
"I think that's a much healthier engagement," Stone says. "Obviously, we want you to come frequently."
Mashable looked at statistics on how much time people spend on
Twitter. It found that Alexa shows the average user on Twitter only four-and-a-half minutes a day and a 2009 Sysmoms report showing only 1.13 percent of users tweeting more than 10 times
a day.
About Twitter addiction
University of Chicago Booth School of Business researchers did a study on more than 200 people in Germany to determine how addictive social media was
compared to other vices, says a News-Medical.net article.
People using BlackBerry smartphones were polled seven times daily asking to report whether they'd "experienced a desire within the past 30 minutes, and
whether or not they succumbed to that desire," rating the desires "from mild to 'irresistible.'"
The study found participants had the "highest rate of 'self-control failures'" when it came to social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and
others.
Wilhelm Hofmann, the study's leader, suggests ease of availability and feeling as if it doesn't "cost much" may be part of the reason social media is a
hard-to-kick addiction.
"With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs—long-term as well as monetary—and the opportunity may not always be the right one," Hofmann says.
"So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still 'steal' a lot of people's time."
How to know you're addicted to Twitter
When CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell hit his 150,000 Twitter follower milestone, he compiled a list of "50 signs you're addicted to Twitter."
Here are some we liked:
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"Your 'bathroom breaks' have increased by 140 percent since joining Twitter."
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"You've reached the point of actually rooting for red lights while driving."
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"You get an adrenaline rush when your tweet comes to exactly 140 characters without any abbreviations or shortcuts.
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"You've woken up in the middle of the night, replied to a tweet, and then had to explain the next morning why you were on Twitter at 3 a.m."
See Rovell's article for the other 46 fun signs.
The 140-step plan
For a fun look at a "Quit Twitter" program, check out this blog post with not five, not 10, not 12, but 140 steps to
kicking your addiction to Twitter.