Television used to be the culprit in the obesity epidemic, now it may be social media websites. A study recently found that the more time you spend on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites the less physically active you are.

Researchers from the University of Ulster in Ireland surveyed 350 students asking them about their time spend on social media sites and engaged in physical activity.  The time students spend on social media sites was negatively correlated with the time they spend exercising.

This is somewhat of a no-brainer; the more time you spend sitting the less time you have to exercise. But correlation doesn’t mean causation. It’s important to note that this study hit a topic that hasn’t been studied in depth before and even the authors admit more research needs to be done on the subject.

“Our findings are intriguing, but we have not conclusively demonstrated that social networking causes lower levels of physical activity. We will need to carry out more research to see if it really is a case of Facebook makes you fat rather than Twitter makes you fitter,” supervising researcher Dr. Wendy Cousins said.