Study finds that college students who use Facebook have significantly lower grade-point averages
A new study presented at the annual meeting of American Educational Research Association by the doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of The Ohio State University and co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University, finds that college students who use Facebook have significantly lower grade-point averages (GPAs) than students who do not use the popular social networking tool.
The study surveyed 219 undergraduate and graduate students and found that GPAs of active Facebook users typically ranged a full grade point lower than those of nonusers on the typical 4.0 GPA scale. Active Facebook users showed an average 3.0 to 3.5 GPA versus 3.5 to 4.0 for their non-networking peers. When the findings were presented to the participating students, 79% of Facebook members did not believe there was any link between their GPA and their networking habits.
Karpinski states that she was not surprised by her study’s findings but she does want to clarify that the study does not suggest that Facebook directly causes lower grades, merely that there’s some relationship between the two factors. Karpinski then went on to explain that perhaps the reason that students that were active users of Facebook had lower GPAs was due to their tendency to be easily distracted or prone to procrastinating.
The study has been met with extreme reactions – from students participants, outraged that anyone would link Facebook users with poor grades or lack of aptitude, saying that it is simply a networking tool to keep people connected and it is not a way to determine if someone is more or less intelligent because they are a user of the online social networking tool – to professors that agree, and cite specific times in class when they have reprimanded students for being online during class.
Although it is the most recent, Karpinski and Duberstein’s study isn’t the first to associate Facebook with diminished mental abilities. In February, Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield published her findings that social networks like Facebook and Bebo were “infantilizing the brain into the state of small children” by shortening the attention span and providing constant instant gratification. And in UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small’s new book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, warns of a decreased ability among devoted followers of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Bebo to read real-life facial expressions and understand the emotional context of subtle gestures. The younger the user, Small says, the greater the risk, he writes, because “young minds tend to be the most sensitive, as well as the most exposed, to digital technology.”
Some experts dismiss all studies of Internet use as flawed, since there is no reasonable way to control for the myriad variables that may affect such research, such as user time inputs and limited participant backgrounds. Facebook has declined to address the specific findings of the new study but issued a statement on Monday, April 13, saying that Facebook isn’t the only diversion around; TV and video games can be just as distracting as online social networks. The company also cited a study conducted by researchers at the University of Melbourne that found that personal Internet use at work can help focus workers’ concentration and increase productivity. Facebook and other social network outlets add that it is ultimately the responsiblity of the student to decide how to spend their time, and they are not locked into using Facebook.
By most accounts, many students spend a significant amount of time logged onto Facebook, a circumstance that irks educators, who complain of students messaging friends or posting snarky status updates from their laptops instead of paying attention to lectures. Watching her fellow classmates update their statuses during class was what originally sparked Karpinski’s interested in the topic while she was earning her master’s degree in developmental psychology at West Virginia University. While she herself is not a Facebook user, many of her students when she was teacher’s assistant were her subjects.
