Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 1237-1245
Computers in Human Behavior

Facebook® and academic performance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.024Get rights and content

Abstract

There is much talk of a change in modern youth – often referred to as digital natives or Homo Zappiens – with respect to their ability to simultaneously process multiple channels of information. In other words, kids today can multitask. Unfortunately for proponents of this position, there is much empirical documentation concerning the negative effects of attempting to simultaneously process different streams of information showing that such behavior leads to both increased study time to achieve learning parity and an increase in mistakes while processing information than those who are sequentially or serially processing that same information. This article presents the preliminary results of a descriptive and exploratory survey study involving Facebook use, often carried out simultaneously with other study activities, and its relation to academic performance as measured by self-reported Grade Point Average (GPA) and hours spent studying per week. Results show that Facebook® users reported having lower GPAs and spend fewer hours per week studying than nonusers.

Introduction

We read it every day in the newspapers, hear it constantly on the news, and thanks to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, we also get it 24/7 online. The “it” is the news about today’s children who are spoiled, love luxury, have bad manners, have contempt for authority, are disrespectful to their elders, contradict their parents, and tyrannize their teachers. We also are constantly being reminded of the fact that the world is passing through troubling times, and that young people today think of nothing but themselves, are impatient, talk as if they know everything, and what passes for wisdom for us is foolishness for them. The only problem with the aforementioned is that the first statement was uttered by Socrates, sometime around 300 BCE and the second statement was uttered by Peter the Hermit, a priest of Amiens and a key figure during the First Crusade, who died July 8, 1115 in Neufmoutier by Huy in Belgium.

A glance in the myriad of scientific journals, academic book sellers, and web sites cannot help but make us think that today’s generation of children is radically different from its predecessors. It appears that the Baby Boomers have spawned Generation X, the MTV generation, Net Geners, Millenials, Generation Y/iGeneration, and even Generation Z (Howe and Strauss, 2000, Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005, Prenksy, 2001, Rosen, 2007, Tapscott, 1997). At a recent conference of the Western Psychological Association (i.e., April 23–26, 2009 in Portland Oregon), Rosen defined these children as follows:

Welcome to the Net Generation. Born in the 1980s and 1990s, they spend their days immersed in a “media diet” accumulating a fulltime job plus overtime devouring entertainment, communication, and every form of electronic media. They are master multitaskers, social networkers, electronic communicators and the first to rush to any new technology. They were born surrounded by technology and with every passing year they add more tools to their electronic repertoire. They live in social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Second Life gathering friends; they text more than they talk on the phone; and they Twitter the night away often sleeping with their cell phones vibrating by their sides.

The assumption is that these children now have acquired specific new multitasking skills that they are able to apply in a learning setting, and that education as we know it is frustrating them in the application of these multitasking skills. Unfortunately, most empirical research shows that this is not the case finding either that (1) children do not possess these skills, or (2) that acting in this way negatively affects the processing of information. This article first tackles these two widely-held, modern-day “truths,” and then presents the results of a preliminary study on the potential relationship between Facebook® (FB) and academic performance.

Section snippets

We hold these truths to be self-evident

We see children today doing their homework, watching YouTube®, instant messaging (IM), Twittering, using FB, surfing websites, and so forth in a way that seems as if they are doing all of this simultaneously. In other words, today’s learners are multitasking Homo Zappiens (Veen & Vrakking, 2006). Consequently, the assumption is made that these children are also able to do all of this effectively, efficiently, and without a loss to the present task. But is this so? Is the youth of today a Homo

Social-networking sites and Facebook®

Socializing via the Internet has become an increasingly important part of young adult life (Gemmill & Peterson, 2006). Relative to the general population, adolescents and young adults are the heaviest computer and Internet users, primarily using it for completing school assignments (46%), e-mail and/or instant messaging (36%), and playing computer games (38%; DeBell & Chapman, 2006). Social-networking sites (hereafter SNS) are the latest online communication tool that allows users to create a

Participants

Data were collected from 102 undergraduate and 117 graduate students at a large, public Midwestern university (N = 219). The sample consisted of 87 (39.7%) male participants, and 132 female participants (60.3%). The majority of participants identified themselves as Caucasian (73.1%), with the next largest group identified as Asian (11.9%). Other ethnicities represented include African–American (7.8%), Bi-racial (3.2%), Hispanic (2.3%), Multi-racial (.9%), and Other (.9%). Participants were

Descriptives

Approximately 43.8% of the entire sample (N = 219) were junior and senior undergraduate students (N = 96) and 53.4% were graduate students (N = 117), with the remainder being freshmen and sophomores. This was not seen as a problem since in this way we hope to have precluded the possibility of an effect of spurious factors such as acclimatization to a new (i.e., university) environment in freshman, as well the effects of changing majors, which is often done either in the freshman year or between the

Discussion and conclusions

The three main purposes of this exploratory investigation were to (1) examine whether differences exist in the academic performance of college student FB users and nonusers, (2) describe a small sample of FB users and nonusers at one Midwestern university, and (3) examine FB users reasons for notions of impact or lack thereof of FB use on their academic performance.

With respect to differences on academic performance, the analyses revealed three major groups of findings: First, FB users and

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