Positives and Negatives of Facebook: Parents, lower grades, and Farmville
Beth Sharb
Issue date: 1/28/10 Section: Lifestyles
I have a confession: I have a separate privacy setting for my mom, kids ten years younger than me, and relatives. They all ask me where my Wall is. The answer? Not visible to you.
What began as a network for college students to keep in touch is now a global community for everyone to keep in touch even those whose friend requests you routinely ignore (for me, that list includes nosey aunts, kids who are freshmen in high school, and random stalkers).
After a new application hit my News Feed last week, which tallied up the amount of time spent on Facebook, I could not believe that I knew people who were spending 35+ hours a week on the site. I haven't been brave enough to see how much I'm on Facebook.
This begs the question- what in the world are we doing on Facebook for 35 hours a week?
For many people, that answer is what is now called creeping. For others, it's the games and applications.
On the subject of Farmville, Kirk Caudill, freshman, said, "My roommate never paid attention to when stuff was due, but when he started playing that game he started setting his alarm to go off on his phone when, like, his grapes were ready. That is the most productive I've ever seen anybody."
Keeping in touch isn't always a good thing. "[It keeps me in touch] too much. That's why I get distracted from my work," Zak Simpson, junior, said.
Facebook boasts more than 350 million users, 50% of which log on in any given day, according to the networking site's statistics page.
Time Magazine recently published an article about a study co-authored by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University.
"The study...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," Time said in the article.
Certainly Facebook isn't the only distraction that can cause lower grades, but let's think about the hours in a week.
There are 168 hours in one week. 35 on Facebook, 15 in class and 56 are spent sleeping (8 hours a night). This is 106 hours not counting eating, sports practices, or work. Let's just factor in a part-time job 20 hours a week.
We've now spent 126 hours, which leaves 44 hours for the rest of your life. How many of those are really spent doing schoolwork?
By Beth Sharb
Editor-in-chief
bsharb@gmail.com
What began as a network for college students to keep in touch is now a global community for everyone to keep in touch even those whose friend requests you routinely ignore (for me, that list includes nosey aunts, kids who are freshmen in high school, and random stalkers).
After a new application hit my News Feed last week, which tallied up the amount of time spent on Facebook, I could not believe that I knew people who were spending 35+ hours a week on the site. I haven't been brave enough to see how much I'm on Facebook.
This begs the question- what in the world are we doing on Facebook for 35 hours a week?
For many people, that answer is what is now called creeping. For others, it's the games and applications.
On the subject of Farmville, Kirk Caudill, freshman, said, "My roommate never paid attention to when stuff was due, but when he started playing that game he started setting his alarm to go off on his phone when, like, his grapes were ready. That is the most productive I've ever seen anybody."
Keeping in touch isn't always a good thing. "[It keeps me in touch] too much. That's why I get distracted from my work," Zak Simpson, junior, said.
Facebook boasts more than 350 million users, 50% of which log on in any given day, according to the networking site's statistics page.
Time Magazine recently published an article about a study co-authored by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University.
"The study...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," Time said in the article.
Certainly Facebook isn't the only distraction that can cause lower grades, but let's think about the hours in a week.
There are 168 hours in one week. 35 on Facebook, 15 in class and 56 are spent sleeping (8 hours a night). This is 106 hours not counting eating, sports practices, or work. Let's just factor in a part-time job 20 hours a week.
We've now spent 126 hours, which leaves 44 hours for the rest of your life. How many of those are really spent doing schoolwork?
By Beth Sharb
Editor-in-chief
bsharb@gmail.com
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