Facebook & Lower Grades

College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university.

However, more than three-quarters of Facebook users claimed that their use of the social networking site didn’t interfere with their studies.

“We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there,” said Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in education at Ohio State University.

“There’s a disconnect between students’ claim that Facebook use doesn’t impact their studies, and our finding showing they had lower grades and spent less time studying.”

While this was a relatively small, exploratory study, it is one of the first to find a relationship between college students’ use of Facebook and their academic achievement.

Typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.

In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.

"There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades,” she said. “It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online."

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What do you think?

I found myself spend relatively less time on Facebook nowadays due to its new layout (especially not happy with the fixed selections of published news, get annoyed that people keep doing tests and publishing them). But I used to spend lots time playing some games (some applications like "Who has the biggest brain?" "GeoChallenge" or "Friendsforsale" that sort of thing) or commenting on photos. Hmmm.. I do agree that it could be a distraction, but would it be affecting people's grades in college?

Anyway, it's important to note that they merely found a relationship, especially there could be many confounding factors underlie the relationship, such as personality traits as mentioned. There are also people who found facebook improved their grade as it helped them to make course related contacts. So perhaps it just depends.. And if we were to compare, I guess the advantages may outrange the disadvantages..

Students ma, even if there is no such thing as facebook on earth, there will always be something else to distract US from study.. LOL (such as blogging? why dont they investigate the relationship between regular blogging and college grade? ahahah..)