More than cigarettes and alcohol, social media and email is more addicting, according to the findings of a new study.

Led by Wilhelm Hofmann, a team from Chicago University's Booth Business School tested the will power of some 205 people by asking them seven times a day for one week to identify their desires and its corresponding strength.

The need for sleep and leisure came on top of the list of the participants. However, in the list of "self-control failure rates," checking in with social media and email came ahead of the urge to have cigarette or having an alcoholic drink.

"Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not 'cost much' to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist," Hofmann said.

"With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs - long-term as well as monetary - and the opportunity may not always be the right one," Hofmann adds.

Most people know that alcohol, drugs, and nicotine can be addicting. But there are other not-so-common addictions cited by the website addictioninfo.com, including:

Shopping
Studies estimate that as many as 17 million Americans can't control their urge to shop, even at the expense of jobs, marriage, family and finances; and a vast majority of compulsive shoppers - about 90 percent - are women.

Internet
Most of the estimated 6 million Internet addicts are hooked on sex sites with pornography or cybersex chat rooms. In a survey by Center for Internet Studies, it was found that 62 percent admitted logging on to pornographic sites for an average of four hours a week; while 37.5 percent said they masturbated while online.

Food
Food addiction is also binge eating, compulsive eating or a food addiction. About 2 percent of adults in the U.S. have binge-eating disorder and people with binge-eating disorder are obese.

Sex
According to the website, sexual addiction has many different forms, including compulsive masturbation, sex with prostitutes, anonymous sex with multiple partners, multiple affairs outside a committed relationship, habitual exhibitionism and voyeurism.