Sex and the Social Media
Survey finds lots of post-coital tweeting. Wham-bam – spare us the spam!
By JERE HESTER
Updated 11:45 PM EST, Tue, Oct 13, 2009
It's not polite to kiss and tweet.
But for some, the attraction of social media apparently is second only to the lure of love.
A recent survey by Retrevo, a consumer electronics shopping site, found that 36 percent of Internet users under 35 tweet or go on Facebook after having sex. That’s compared to 8 percent of the over-35 crowd.
It's not clear from the report exactly what the post-coital tweeters are microblogging about (though the finding that men are twice as likely as women to use social media after a passionate interlude might offer a clue). There are other signs, though, that social media is being employed to report on bedroom exploits.
A new website, with the says-it-all URL Ijustmadelove.com, allows users to click on a map of the world to mark the spot of the act – with cartoon pink and blue bunnies in the throes. The East Coast and Europe seem heavily represented, suggesting a surplus of Internet-connected braggarts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Pepsi, meanwhile, is under fire for an iPhone application tied to its new Amp energy drink that feeds men come-on lines aimed at helping them bed different kinds of women (represented in caricatures like the sorority girl, the punk rocker and the foreign exchange student). The service also encourages guys to report their app-aided conquests on Facebook and Twitter. (On Monday, Pepsi tweeted a classic non-apology apology, saying it was sorry "if (the app is) in bad taste," after offending at least half the population.)
This is all, no doubt, more fodder for critics who contend that the rise of social media has brought decrease in personal boundaries and an increase in narcissism.
But the Retrevo survey also points to how ingrained social media has become in everyday life, especially for the younger set. Perhaps more significantly, the poll results also suggest a rise in addiction to Twitter, Facebook and the like.
The survey found that 27 percent of people under 35 check Facebook 10 or more times a day, and that 65 percent use social media while on vacation. A previous survey by Crowd Science, as Mashable notes, found an alarming number of folks who admit to texting from the toilet (ugh) and from the driver’s seat (yikes!).
The urge to text after sex might spur a different kind of reaction from recipients – more along the lines of wham-bam-spare-us-the-spam. But at least grabbing for the BlackBerry is healthier than reaching for a cigarette.
Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former City Editor of the New York Daily News, where he started as a reporter in 1992. Follow him on Twitter.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Oct 13, 2009 4:47 PM EST
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