If you want tostop smoking, know that Monday is a good day to do it. This prediction does not come from astrology but from an arithmetic survey made on the Google search engine from 2008 to 2012. Researchers from San Diego State University, Santa Fe Institute, Monday Campaigns, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wanted to know if the decision to quit smoking came completely at random or if it could be characterized. The scientists therefore carried out their investigations on the Internet by analyzing the number of quitting quitting queries recorded on Google in French, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish over the past five years, from 2008 to 2012.
The results revealed that Internet users appear to be more motivated to quit on Mondays because they learn more about quitting smoking on Mondays than any other day of the week. The requests are indeed 25% higher on this day.
Concretely, the expression “help to stop smoking” is typed on average 750,000 times on the Net. This search is 67% times higher on Monday than Friday, and 11% higher on Monday than Wednesday. Conversely, it is Saturday that we seem the least motivated to quit smoking because requests are 165% lower at the start of the week. The weekend lends itself more to distractions and relaxation of the efforts of the week.
Stop smoking, a collective behavior
“Everyone thinks that the decision to quit smoking is made in an unpredictable, even chaotic way. Google research data reveals that the urge to quit is part of a larger collective pattern of behavior that depends on the day of the week, ”says John Ayers of San Diego State University, author of the study.
These results should encourage public health campaigns to concentrate their efforts (money, workforce, actions) more in the area of tobacco control and help with smoking cessation at the start of the week, when smokers seem most receptive.