Facebook and email are more seductive than the erotic allure of your partner, according to a new study. Researchers have found that it is easier for a person to turn down sex than it is to keep from checking his messages.

The study was based on the answers of nearly 205 college-age men and women who were asked to participate in a smartphone survey over the course of one week. The phones were set up to alert the participants seven times a day that it was time to take a quick survey on their overall desires and their ability to resist them.

What researchers found was that while the desire for sex was abundant, bumping uglies didn’t have anything on the participants' desire to jump into bed with their social media accounts and start pressing those buttons on their Facebook and Twitter pages. According to the study's author, assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business WIlhelm Hofmann, “Media desires, such as social networking, checking emails, surfing the Web or watching television might be hard to resist in light of the constant availability, huge appeal, and apparent low costs of these activities.”

Researchers say subjects are more likely to give in to things like Facebook (42 percent) because it is easier and more convenient than sex. “People are constantly looking down to check their phones,” said Karen North, director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California. “They can’t stop.”

If you fear that social media is taking over your personal, professional and sex life, North adds that you may want to consider selecting specific times to check your messages and catch up with your friends’ latest status updates. “If it is interfering with social/business relationships, work, or school performance, then people should try to scale back and control or limit the behavior,” she said, describing how self-imposed “rules,” like no social media at the dinner table, can help curb the constant urge to check Facebook.

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