Mediaboss Marketing

Washington, Jan 21:

The negative relationship between Facebook use and grades has little to do with the social networking site Facebook, a new study has found.

Helping college students balance social media use and schoolwork is better than disconnecting, researchers said.

The study by Reynol Junco, an associate professor at Iowa State University, found that while freshman struggle to balance their use, social media is less of a problem for upper classmen. The difference relates to self-regulation.

Junco surveyed more than 1,600 college students about their Facebook behaviour, looking at time spent strictly using the social networking site and time spent on Facebook while multitasking.

For freshmen, all Facebook use had a negative impact on their grades. For sophomores and juniors, only time spent using Facebook while doing schoolwork hurt their GPA. For seniors, there was no relationship between the two.

It would be easy to conclude that simply spending less time on Facebook would improve a students GPA, but Junco cautions against rushing to that conclusion.

Certain tasks on Facebook, such as sharing links and checking in with friends, were positively linked to GPA, said Junco.

In previous research, Junco found that tasks, such as creating or RSVPing to an event, were positively linked to student engagement.

Its not just the way students are accessing the site, but the way in which theyre using the site that has an effect on academic outcomes, Junco said.

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Facebook not to blame for negative impact on grades: study