College Facebook Fans Get Lower Grades

College students who use Facebook spend less time hitting the books and get lower grades than students who haven't signed up for the popular social networking site, a university study showed.

The Ohio State University study also found that Facebook fans in college are in denial. Nearly eight in 10 claimed that their use of the site didn't interfere with their studies and that academics was a priority for them.

"We can't say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying, but we did find a relationship there," Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student at OSU, said in a statement.

While the study was small and exploratory in nature, it was the first to find a relationship between the use of Facebook and academic performance, the university said. Typically, Facebook users in the study had grade point averages between 3.0 and 3.5, while nonusers had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.

In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week of studying, while nonusers studied 11 to 15 hours per week.

The researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduates and 117 graduate students. Fully, 148 of the participants had a Facebook account.

Overall, the study found that 85% of undergraduates are Facebook users at Ohio State, while only 52% of graduate students have accounts. Students who spent more time working at paid jobs used Facebook less than those who were more involved in extracurricular activities at school.

Science, technology, engineering, math, and business majors were more likely to use Facebook than were students majoring in the humanities and social sciences. One reason for the difference may be that the latter students spend less time on the Internet, Karpinski said.

There were no differences in Facebook use between racial and ethnic groups or between men and woman, the study found. However, younger and full-time students were more likely to use the social network.

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