Facebook messes up your GPA
It's a crisis even worse than the Twitteresque redesign, even worse than the terms of service contretemps.
Yes, researchers at Ohio State University have delved deep into the habit that is Facebook and concluded that those who express their membership regularly do worse in school tests.
In fact, they say, the majority of those who Facebook daily do worse by as much as one whole grade.
Aryn Karpinski, one of the Ohio State education department researchers, was quoted in the Times of London as saying: "Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying. "Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon."
Karpinski will be presenting her findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Some 68 percent of the Facebookers among the 219 young things questioned enjoyed a significantly lower GPA than those who eschewed friending and poking.
I don't like to alarm anyone, but might I suggest this research be given an incomplete?
If the researchers had suggested that with every hour you spend on Facebook, your GPA sinks proportionately, then perhaps parents might be entitled to put controls on social networking and demand that their children get rid of their 5,000 closest chums.
But I have a suspicious and entirely unscientific feeling that all this research may tell us so far is that bookwormy, people-uncomfortable types do well in school tests.
So nothing's changed, right?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Or that this report seems in tone with CNET, where reporting is scant? If the writer wants to slam the report, maybe he might read it first?
Also, it says grades dropped by a grade, so the nonbookworms presumably moved from C to D, and the bookworms moved from A to B.
It's not like I care about the OSU study; but anyone with kids sort of notes how distracting Facebook can be.
p.s. Get off my lawn!
LOL!!!!!!!!!
I knew there was a reason I don't like Facebook. Who wants to live behind a fracking walled garden?
Article headline is misleading. "But I have a suspicious and entirely unscientific feeling that all this research may tell us so far is that bookwormy, people-uncomfortable types do well in school tests." You even state that this research proves nothing, yet the headline remains misleading.
See one way or the other something or someone will always be blamed for drop in a child's grades, but what is the real issue here. Are they trying to blame it on facebook.
Well turn off the computers take away their social life and see if it gets better. Let me know the result.
Otherwise, there are too many variables to be sure Facebook is the sole cause of the lower grades.
Correlation does not imply causation.
The converse is also true: Schools don't prepare you for the real world! In the real world, the vast majority of workers have to use communication tools to achieve their results. If they get good grades, they probably didn't spend a lot of time communicating with others. If their job role doesn't demand that, it might be okay. But schools need to start demanding that students learn more about communication!
They'll figure out how to get their college coursework done properly and on time and they'll graduate, or they won't and they'll wind up dropping out or flunking out. That's been a fact of life long before the internet and its many timesinks became ubiquitous.
Ten ways to do something against stupid childeren: http://zonow.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=17
My GPA suffered, but I managed to get a job. Now, where I went to school and what grades I got are completely irrelevant. The job puts much more weight on interpersonal relationships than pure intelligence.
My opinion (and how I'm trying to raise my kid): you should be willing to sacrifice some educational rigor to get the real (and indulgent) experiences in life.
...but he's still grounded if he brings home 'D's.
- by ascii3fhex April 13, 2009 5:36 AM PDT
- FrenchieDC illustrates the prevailing attitude toward learning and education in this country. Note the implied contrast between what his kid will learn in school and real experiences in life (I don't know what he means by 'indulgent' in that context). This attitude is the reason the 21st century will belong to Asia. Unfortunately, it's not new. Education and learning have never really been respected in American culture. Our biggest heroes are the ones who eschew "all that fancy book-learning" and instead "learn from experience." And, as we see, we now are a nation where college graduates are barely able to do long division and have only the vaguest idea of how compound interest works.
- Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (41 Comments)Public schools, according to Thomas Jefferson, were to prepare people to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth. They were supposed to educate people so they could participate in the democratic form of government. We have completely forgotten this original objective of schools. Plenty schools don't even teach Civics anymore. But I digress. We've never really recognized that what takes place in school is really of value.
The problem isn't that social notworking sites are causing students' grades to decline. The problem is that our culture places little importance on formal education and learning.