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Facebook Users Get Lower Grades In College
Hugh Pickens writes "According to a survey of college students Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users. The study by Aryn Karpinski, an education researcher at Ohio State University, found that Facebook user GPAs are in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users and that Facebook users also studied anywhere from one to five hours per week, compared to non-users who studied 11 to 15 or more hours per week. Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation and that the grades association could be caused by something else. 'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.' One hypothesis is that students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook or that students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music. '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.' As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn't have a Facebook account, although the co-author of the study does. 'For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction.'"
With the proliferation of online degrees and most people moving their social interaction to social networking sites, college may soon be an extension of Facebook. 50 years from now Facebook University may be the most prestigious college in the United States. I don't know if I'm being funny or insightful, but all of a sudden I feel depressed.
Well, first off, it's Ohio State.
:).
Second, this sounds like the kind of "study" done for a sociology class. Plenty of inflated grades among people who take Soc 101.
Third, it was a survey. It'd be interesting to see if there's a correlation between not using Facebook and lying about your GPA
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Even people without social lives per se use social networks online. It's the boring brutes who can't see a hair past their GPA (and are the only ones to actually care about it) that nobody wants to socialise with and thus locking them into a perpetual circle of academic exelence at the cost of inability to operate in real life.
I bet most successful CEO's, politicans, lawyers and other impressively successful types would use social networks a lot if they existed way back when. However, I'm sure most of their accountants and other people with great GPA's wouldn't.
Networking - it's been here forever.
The author didn't say that facebook causes lower grades, they said facebook users have lower grades.
Read the following (from the summary!) closely:
'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.' One hypothesis is that students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook or that students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music. '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.'
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Pity the study did not compare the grades of students who used other social network sites. It might possibly be that Facebook attracted people of lower learning ability than some other sites did. Studying those relationships could be interesting.
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