Could micro-blogging site Twitter be actually more effective than traditional ways of helping smokers kick the habit?
A new study from the University of California Irvine and Stanford University researchers found that Tweet2Quit, a full-time, automated Twitter-based smoking intervention program, offered double the success rate of traditional smoking cessation techniques.
Tweet2Quit accomplishes this through automated messages sent to small, virtual self-help smoker groups looking to the social media platform to help them quit. The messages incorporate clinical guidelines for cessation, and uses positive and open-ended questions to stir conversation, such as “What will you do when you feel the urge to smoke?”
After two months of using the platform, Tweet2Quit users reported 40 percent sustained abstinence versus the 20 percent in controls.
"Our current results indicate significant possibilities for using social media as a delivery mechanism for health prevention intervention, specifically in smoking cessation," says study author and marketing professor Cornelia Pechmann, who highlighted low-cost, highly scalable social media as a promising tobacco therapy around the world.
An average of 23 percent of tweets was made in response to Tweet2Quit’s automated messages, while 77 percent were spontaneous ones. The twice-daily messages crafted by tobacco treatment specialists encouraged tweeting among group members, which increased their accountability for quitting, explained Pechmann.
These online virtual support groups for smokers offer scientists a novel look into a tobacco user’s commitment to quitting as well as supporting the same move in other people.
Pechmann and her co-author Judith Prochaska, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford, will next aim to probe gender differences in the matter of relapse and learn how to increase quit rates among female smokers.
The researchers will also examine the Internet’s potential – particularly through social media – in driving and supporting these support groups not only for smoking, but also exercise and weight loss.
The findings were published in the journal Tobacco Control.
A new study discovered that tobacco smoking can significantly change the bacterial balance in the mouth, which influences the risk of mouth, lung, and digestive system conditions.
Current smokers emerged with a notable growth of more than 150 oral bacterial species, including 10 percent more Streptococcus than non-smokers. Streptococcus species promote tooth decay.
The good news, however, is that oral bacterial balance can be restored once a person quits smoking.
Photo: Alex Ulanov | Flickr
