Monday Most Popular Day for Google Searches on Quitting Smoking

Monday is the most popular day for conducting Google searches about quitting smoking, a new study finds. On average, there are 25 percent more searches related to smoking cessation on Mondays than on other days.

Researchers analyzed searches in six languages—English, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish—conducted around the world from 2008 to 2012, USA Today reports. Searches for smoking cessation help are 145 percent lower on Saturdays compared with Mondays, the researchers wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“People see Mondays as a fresh start, a chance to get their acts together,” said study author Morgan Johnson, Research Director for The Monday Campaigns, a not-for-profit organization that dedicates the first day of every week to health. The group decided to sponsor the study after seeing that Mondays were the most popular day for calls to smokers’ quit lines and visits to the Smokefree.gov website.

Health advocates may want to consider targeting online ads for early in the week, and making sure quit lines can handle a lot of calls then, too, said study co-author Joanna Cohen, Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control. She advises smokers not to limit their quit attempts to one big day, such as their birthday, New Year’s Day or the Great American Smokeout. “If you relapse, you can try again next Monday,” she noted. “We want to tell people they don’t have to wait a year to try again.”