The results of study 4 provide additional support for the finding that social networks decrease self-control by enhancing self-esteem for those focused on strong ties while browsing the network.
One limitation of our findings is that we have used the same control group (i.e., browsing CNN.com) in all of our studies on self-control.
Thus, it is possible that there is something about browsing CNN.com that could affect self-control. To rule this out as a possibility, we reran the anagram task with a different control condition.
Specifically, we had people browse Facebook or browse TMZ.com, a celebrity news and gossip website that is more
social than CNN.com but not a social network in the sense of Facebook. The results of this follow-up study fully replicate
the self-control findings of study 4.