Facebooking, texting may lead to lower grades —study

The new school year is still three months away, but students may want to heed this advice: Facebooking or texting during study time will likely lead to lower grades.

 

A study by Reynol Junco and Shelia Cotten suggested the human brain may not be able to simultaneously combine studying and information and communication technologies (ICTs).

 

"Engaging in Facebook use or texting while trying to complete schoolwork may tax students’ capacity for cognitive processing and preclude deeper learning. Our research indicates that the type and purpose of ICT use matters in terms of the educational impacts of multitasking," they said.

 

ICTs include social networking like Facebook, text messaging, and instant messaging.

 

They noted advances in technology had resulted in ICT users - including students - being presented with more real-time data streams.

 

However, they said this has also resulted in individuals increasingly engaging in multitasking as an information management strategy.

 

In their web survey from 1,839 college students at one university, they found students reported spending a large amount of time using ICTs on a daily basis.

 

"Students reported frequently searching for content not related to courses, using Facebook, emailing, talking on their cell phones, and texting while doing schoolwork. Hierarchical (blocked) linear regression analyses revealed that using Facebook and texting while doing schoolwork were negatively associated with overall college GPA," they said.

 

A separate article on Mashable said the study included questions about how often students IM, email, search and talk during study time, but only Facebook and texting ultimately correlated with a lower GPA.

 

It added there was no relationship between grades and using other technologies while studying.

 

“Human information processing is insufficient for attending to multiple input streams and for performing simultaneous tasks,” Mashable quoted Junco and Cotten as saying.

 

Junco also told Mashable suggests the difference might have something to do with how students are using different technologies.

 

Students may be more likely to email professors and search out of academic curiosity than to socialize through email or search, while they’re unlikely to text message their teaching assistants for homework help.

 

“It could be that students with lower grades just happen to do more Facebook and texting. But I think this study in the context of other research does seem to show that it is about what they’re doing while they study and not the other way around,” Junco told Mashable.

 

Study findings

 

The study showed that, on average, students in the study sent 97 text messages and spent 101 minutes on Facebook every day.

 

Mashable said that while Junco does not think students will leave either technology behind, in his own classes at Lock Haven University he encourages students to think about how they use them.

 

“What I tell them is, ‘look, you’re going to sit down to study anyway,” he says. “You might as well make it the most efficient use of your time.’” — TJD, GMA News