Nearly Half Of Us Admit To Being #SocialAddicts

We discover just how many of you say you are addicted to social media.

Published 2nd Aug 2015

Nearly half of the people we asked admitted they had a social media addiction.

According to our special news investigation out of 1031respondants, 50% of you said you were addicted to your online platforms.

We also asked you, could you live without the likes of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? Well, in Scotland 35% of you said no and in England 37% said no.

But it seems like although some of us acknowledge the obsession and need to be connected, many of us are in fact in denial. Our #socialaddict campaign revealed that 78% of people in Scotland knew of someone else who is a Facebook addict and 82% of English respondents said the same. In Glasgow and Edinburgh 86% of people who answered the survey said someone else they knew spent too much time online.

On average we’ve discovered people say they check their accounts around 15 times per day and the majority of you said you posted on your Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ‘multiple times’ a week.

So when is most of this activity happening? In Scotland 50% of you said you check social media before even getting out of bed in the morning and in England that figure was even higher at 55%!

So why are we are so connected with our devices and has it presented problems for our wellbeing?

We asked you if you knew of relationships or friendships that had been damaged as a result of social media, and in the 15 year olds to 24 year olds category we couldn’t believe some of the results. Out of our listeners 72% in Scotland and 69% in England said yes! Facebook and other platforms were responsible for the break-downs in people’s relationships and had caused some major issues.

Listen to our special interviews in our news bulletins to hear from our audience telling us about break-ups with their partners as a result of social media and we hear from people ‘so obsessed’ with checking up on their other half that it’s driven them ‘crazy’.

We also want to say a massive thanks for being part of our investigation into online habits and how damaging they can be; sometimes!