November 12, 2013

Mondays Top Quit-Smoking Google Searches

Based on the number of searches for info about smoking cessation on Google, it appears more people consider quitting on Mondays than any other day. Dina Fine Maron reports

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Mondays. Maybe the toughest day to get out of bed. But Mondays appear to be the most popular day for people to consider giving up smoking. That’s what Google search queries from 2008 to 2012 suggest.

Global Google searches across six different languages reveal a weekly pattern to when people consider snuffing out their butts for good. And search terms like “quit smoking help” were most popular on Monday, an average of 25 percent higher than other days. That’s when combined across English, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. So finds a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association. [John W. Ayers et al., Circaseptan (Weekly) Rhythms in Smoking Cessation Considerations]

These higher search numbers are real—it’s not that there are more Google searches for everything on Mondays. Of course, the stats show only that people were doing info searches on Monday, not that they actually tried to quit.

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Still, the data mining offers insights. If the start of a new week means heightened interest in tobacco termination, public health campaigns might also target Mondays as the best time to hook a smoker trying to kick the habit.

—Dina Fine Maron

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

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