As if we didn’t already know social media can be addictive, it was recently confirmed by science.

A recent study found that Facebook can have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine – scary, huh?

Every form of social media has the potential to grip our attention and have us reaching for our smartphones throughout the day. It’s those lovely notification symbols that give you a nice little dopamine burst.

We decided to take a look at social media addiction through the lens of social data because where else would people talk about their social media addiction but on social media itself?

Observing social media like some sort of messed up support group for social junkies, we studied the data on those declaring addiction and what they planned to do about it.

I think I’m addicted to social media MUCH more than I am to recreational drug use. This is worrying. — M1 (@LoLOrcasm) February 26, 2016

Choose Life

Using social intelligence, we decided to discover how many people were struggling and which sites are the most addictive on the net. Using search terms with variations on “I’m addicted to _______” we were able to identify people with a self-confessed social media addiction.

In total, we found 39,489 mentions of addiction over five months, with women making up 56% of the conversation for gender-categorized authors.

Twitter seems to be the most addictive social media site on the web, with Facebook, Youtube and Instagram following behind.