Twitter helps you give up smoking - encouragement from fellow quitters makes you more likely to kick habit

People trying to quit smoking who regularly tweet each other are more successful at kicking the habit.

That's according to a 'Tweet2Quit' study by researchers from Stanford University and UC Irvine.

The researchers set up Twitter support groups with twenty members who communicated with each other through the social networking site for 100 days.

Participants were also given nicotine patches, daily automated text messages and a web-based guide. In addition, they were asked to tweet their group at least once a day about their own progress.

There were no expert facilitators, but two daily messages written in advance by counsellors and scheduled were created to encourage peer-to-peer discussions.

An example of such a conversation starter would be: "What will you do when you feel the urge to smoke?"

On average, participants send 72 tweets each over the first 100 days.

The first group had a smoking cessation rate of 42%. That is to say that 60 days after the quit date, 42% of individuals reported that they were still not smoking.

Researchers then tweaked the auto messaging process and found that the second group had a success rate of 75%.

Those who talked about nicotine patches, feeling proud of themselves

"The Twitter environment created a sort of party dynamic," said researcher Cornelia Pechmann.

“That's especially important for social smokers. In addition, group leaders naturally emerged, facilitating the online conversations. These leaders played a critical role in keeping people engaged."

Some types of tweets seemed to be more linked to quitting, such as talking about using nicotine patches, self-rewards and setting a quit date.

Twitter provided an immediate way to interact with a large number of people in real-time without having to be friends with them in real life. That support, combined with accountability and bragging rights seemed to help participants quit.

It's not the first study to use digital messages to help people quit. There have been a number of experiments with text messages, apps and other digital self-help tools.

culled from mirror.co.uk