Facebook leads to lower grades

I wasn't sure if the point of this story was too obvious to bear blogging about, but I figured in the end it bore repeating: In a nutshell, Facebook is a ridiculously huge distraction for students -- and now one study says that using the popular social network can have a measurable effect on their grades.

The study comes from Ohio State University's education department and involved polling over 200 students about their Facebook habits. The results probably weren't a huge surprise: 65 percent of students checked Facebook at least once a day and usually more frequently than that, with some kids spending more than an hour on the site daily.

But those that did use the site had remarkably lower grades -- the equivalent of a full letter grade average lower than their non-Facebookin' counterparts.

None of this should come as much of a shock: The less time you spend on your schoolwork, I'd imagine the lower your grades are likely to be, whether that time is spent on Facebook or some other diversion. Whether Facebook is unique in causing grades to fall vs. video games, frat parties, football games, or watching 24 marathons is probably yet to be proven.

The really interesting thing I found about the Ohio State study, however, is a tiny statistic buried at the bottom of the story: According to the research, 79 percent of Facebookers felt that time spent on the website "had no impact on their work." Now that's interesting. It's one thing to waste time online even though you know it's hurting your productivity or your grades, it's something else not to realize (or pretend) that it's having an impact. In other words: Think before you poke.

Update: A better digest of the data is available here