Time Magazine: Facebook Users are More Stupider
A few days ago I lamented about breaking down with the masses and joining Twitter. About a month ago, I got sick of all my friends sending me invites from their email list to join Facebook and finally did. I don’t like feeling left out.
But even after joining, I didn’t become addicted. I’ll check who has added me every so many days but much like Twitter, I don’t have much to say. If I have something important to say, I tell people (or I write it here).
So now comes an article from Time Magazine that claims the one thing Facebook users share is lower grades.
The study, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association on April 16, surveyed 219 undergraduate and graduate students and found that GPAs of Facebook users typically ranged a full grade point lower than those of nonusers — 3.0 to 3.5 for users versus 3.5 to 4.0 for their non-networking peers. It also found that 79% of Facebook members did not believe there was any link between their GPA and their networking habits. (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)
Karpinski says she isn’t surprised by her findings but clarifies that the study does not suggest that Facebook directly causes lower grades, merely that there’s some relationship between the two factors. “Maybe [Facebook users] are just prone to distraction.
Now of course what catches my eye is how stupid are the researchers. 20 million facebook users and their sample size is only 219. Now let’s say the researchers where just referring to the population of Ohio State University Students (60,000), the would need almost 400 students in their sample to make it more accurate. But I go off on my statistics rant.
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Me no agree. Me one of researchers. Me double check my facts. Me no stupid. Me twitter you know to say same thing.
Me thinks someone needs a vacation.
I’m definitely thicker since I started using Twitter. Thankfully, my FB presence is anonymous and exists purely so I can ransack people’s profiles for photographs etc for the paper when members have the misfortune to die/threaten to take a gun into school (and brag about it on FB first, somewhat proving the above research)/do something noteworthy.
I run two Twitter accounts, my own and my newspaper’s, so I am on a fast train to stupidity. Good. It’s not easy being this awesomely brilliant.
Thicker??? As in not excersing as much or Thicker as in, in the brain?
Do they have statistics rants?? It sounds really boring.
Oh yeah…instead of rating women on a 1-10 scale we say 83% of us think she is a 7 plus or minus 2.
I’m sorry, I thought video games made you stupider, not participating in Facebook (which in and of itself, can be a contributing factor to being a well rounded individual grounded in an alternate reality in which stupid is really smart, and smart is really stupid).
I would normally have a good retort but I am too stupid to understand your circular logic.
WIB – How can you possibly Twitter if you have to keep your comments to 140 characters or less? With all of the extra vowels you use…I say no way in hell.
And shame on you bearman for caving in on this. We need to stay strong in these troubled times. Next will be “Flitter”. 5 characters, max.
c u l8r
Interesting that Flitter is 5 characters or less when the word is 6.
So its official FB is for idiots. I will have to let them know..Oh wait..I love this part “79% of Facebook members did not believe there was any link between their GPA and their networking habits.” If you are stupid or shall we say academically challenged, would you be able to determine a causal relationship?
I do agree this is a poorly done study on many levels. Wouldn’t social habits in general relate to GPA? i.e. number of hours per week spent at parties, with friends, ect.
True…I was a honor student in college. Guess that pretty much sums up my social life.
I wonder how these numbers compare to the average Facebook user GPA when Facebook only allowed university students to join. There are a lot of stupid people on Facebook now. (Want proof? Look through the Help section. Many, many people ask vague questions in the wrong help categories, and dozens of people will tag their same question into the same thread, contributing absolutely nothing. Other times, someone will type an intelligible question, but some moron will reply with something like, “dfddfd,” and hundreds of people will tag it as being a helpful answer.)
Hmmm…Brandon, it sounds like you spend a lot of time on Facebook. What is your GPA. ha ha j/k. Good to see you here.