College students: ‘I’d rather check Facebook than have sex’

(Rex Features)

Is Facebook better than sex? That's the not-so-scientific question being asked today, after a University of Chicago study measured the "irresistibility" of various desires and found that checking Facebook trumped getting it on.

ABC News reports that the study used smartphone-based surveys to probe the daily desires of 205 men and women, mostly of college age. Respondents were "alerted" seven times a day and asked to rate the strength of various impulses: while the desire for sex was stronger, study subjects consistently reported they were more likely to cave in to the desire to check Facebook or use email.

Now, it's been a while since IndyVoices went to university - but as far as we remember, even in that promised land, it was many, many times easier to "give in" to the impulse for Facebook than that for sex.