Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Facebook users have bad grades.....


At least that's what a study done by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and her co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University have concluded. College students who use this very popular social networking site have a considerable difference in G.P.A. from those who don't.

Typically, Facebook users in the study had G.P.As between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had G.P.As 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.

The researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.

The study found that 85 percent of undergraduates were Facebook users, while only 52 percent of graduate students had accounts.

I can't believe that facebook is the only variable between all these students that links them to lower grades. There should other considerations, like amount of time watching t.v., studying, if they work. The most important thing is, how long are these students on the site? 20 min, 45 min, an hour...more?

Sure, it can be distractating, but how much more than anything else? Maybe we'll find out more data about users in the near future, and we'll have a better idea of the impact it's having on our culture. What do you think of this study? Do you agree or do you have another opinion? Here's an article in Time that also talks about the same thing as well.

Now I have to go and check my facebook status.

4 comments:

Booklet Printing | CatalogPrintingExperts.com said...

very informative! nice post!

A Special Kind Of Teacher..... said...

Thanks....I glad you enjoyed it.

Jennifer Wagaman said...

I would love to know how parental influence plays into this as well. If students who use facebook more have less parent involvement, that could make a huge impact on grades.

www.321learn.net

J. Vaughn said...

I could see how Facebook users receive lower GPA's than those who do not belong to Facebook. So much time is spent posting on walls and viewing friend's pages. However, like the initial blog poses the question, how much do other forms of media or other distractions also play a role in the lives of these college students? Do these students belong to other organizations or clubs? There is a lot to this study that could compromise the results.