Facebook makes you do worse in school?
Facebook started in college campuses, and since then the 18-24 demographic has remained its strongest base. The social network’s utility is unquestionable when it comes to keeping in touch with friends, making new connections, and even growing your business. However, other people think of it as a mere time waster, and the results of a study on Facebook’s effects on students’ grades lend support to their claim.
Doctoral student Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University questioned 219 students in her campus (102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students). About 68% of the participants, or 148, said they have a Facebook account. Among undergraduates, 85% were Facebook users, while it was less popular with graduate students with only 52% usage. On average, she found that non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. Facebook users, meanwhile, had lower GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5.
So does this validate the claim of Facebook/social media haters? Not conclusively. In fact, the study is far too incomplete to be useful. For one, there were no “before and after” comparisons. Students which had low GPAs could have already been poor performers in the first place, with Facebook having little to no effect on their performance. Like it or not, social media is here to stay. Having a blanket statement that using Facebook isn’t good for you is not going to scare people to stop, although an increased awareness in usage might be helpful. The study could have included – as a guide – the number of hours per day (or per week) that can be considered healthy, and the point at which Facebook becomes detrimental to a student.
There were also no numbers on how long it took from signing up in Facebook before it begins to affect your school performance, on average, if such a parameter exists. One other curious thing the study found is that “Science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and business majors were more likely to use Facebook than were students majoring in the humanities and social sciences”. I guess that’s pretty much a given since these courses attract the techies. I don’t know about your university, but in my campus, courses related to these are usually the most difficult with the highest attrition rate and the lowest grades being given. Could this have skewed the Facebook study? I wish I could read their whole report to know.
There is obviously a finite number of hours in one day. Doing one thing, whatever it is, lessens time for any other activity like studying. The trick, hounding students since time immemorial, has been to balance everything and still maintain your sanity.
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