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Students who use Facebook and other social networking sites while they study get significantly lower grades than those who do not, according to psychologists.
As reported in the Daily Mail, a study has found that the exam results of those who used the social networking site while working, even if it was on in the background, were 20 per cent lower than non-users. Researchers say the findings undermine the theory that young people's brains are better at multitasking on digital gadgets.
Study author Professor Paul Kirschner said:
'The problem is that most people have Facebook or other social networking sites, their emails and maybe instant messaging constantly running in the background while they are carrying out other tasks. Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes.'
His team studied 219 students aged between 19 and 54 at an American university. The Facebook users among them had a typical grade point average - a score from zero up to four - of 3.06. Non-users had an average GPA of 3.82.
Those who did not use the site also said they devoted more time to studying, spending an average of 88 per cent longer working outside class.
Three quarters of the Facebook users said they didn't believe spending time on the site affected their academic performance, but most of the remaining quarter admitted it had a harmful effect, with many saying it put them off their work.
Professor Kirschner said that he expected to see similar results in younger pupils. He also said he was not 'demonising' Facebook and pointed to the distracting nature of all social networking.
He commented:
'We should resist the fashionable views of educational gurus that children can multi-task, and that we should adapt our education systems accordingly to keep up with the times.'
The study by the psychologist from the Open University in the Netherlands will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.
It will compound concerns over the superficial approach that experts say is encouraged by an increasingly distracting online world that promotes multi-tasking. In the influential book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues the internet has given rise to 'cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning'.
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Comments
Students were more than capable of multi-tasking. What was difficult for some students is to be able to balance their time with the tasks and for some to be able to switch off from the background social elements when required to listen. But isnt that a skill that the teacher should be trying to develop in the students in these scenarios?
Do you think that schools should be looking into creating educational groups on facebook for homestudy purposes, in a similar way to that of Linkedin groups?
Obviously integrating a personal facebook account with pupils is probably not the best idea, but could an anonymous 'Teacher' account be set up which all teachers from one school could log in to to set homework and help with revision?
I'd love to hear thoughts on this...
Ignoring or dismissing the technology is dangerous in my opinion in the same way as it was to do the same when computers became more popular or TV, video etc
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