April 14, 2009 by Matt Thomas
A few weeks ago on this blog I wrote a post called something like ‘Facebook Makes you Stupid,’ in response to research from the US that Facebook use lowers attention span. Now, it appears that research has been backed up.
The University of Ohio has become the first to research the relationship between membership of Facebook and academic performance and their findings will not make happy reading for Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently, the study found that users of Facebook averaged a grade point average of around 3.0 to 3.5 with non users managing GPAs that were about 0.5 better. The study also found that non users managed to spend almost twice the amount of time hitting the books as their Facebook-loving counterparts.
The University are the first to admit that their study is preliminary and limited in scope, plus there’s the fact that Facebook users tend, by definition, to be more social people, who of course have less time for work. However, when combined with other work that has come to similar conclusions the study adds to an interesting body of evidence that should be enough to have the Facebook PR department a little worried.
Related posts:
