It’s good for social-networking, but not so much for your grades. A new study has found that students who use Facebook while working — even if it’s only sporadically or even on in the background — had exam scores that were 20 percent lower than those who didn’t.
In a study of 219 students between the ages of 19-54, American researchers found that Facebook users scored a grade point average of 3.06 out of 4.0. That compares to an average 3.82 GPA for students who did not use the social-networking website.
The survey found that non-Facebook users said that they had more time to study because they didn’t use the website. Whereas three quarters of the people who used the site while studying didn’t think it had a negative affect on their studies.
[RELATED: Friend us — Marketplace’s Facebook page].
One of the study’s authors says that the barrage of online distractions — like Facebook or instant messaging — may hurt people from devoting the amount of time needed to complete their tasks.
Nevertheless, our own Jeremy Hobson says if you want to look at Marketplace’s Facebook page, that’s OK.
“The authors of this study did not look into the effects of the Marketplace facebook page, so until they do, remember that we are always happy to distract you online,” he says.
[RELATED: Germans to bosses: Get off Facebook!]
The study will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
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