Facebook killing exam grades

According to UK tabloid the Daily Mail, using Facebook can lower exam results by as much as twenty per cent. The article does not say what reading the Daily Mail does for exam results.

"It is what parents of teenagers who 'revise' in front of the computer have long feared", reads the intro to the typically sensationalist article, which goes on to warn that, "Students who use Facebook while they study get significantly lower grades than those who do not."

We are not keeping count, but we reckon that this takes the Mail's internet dangers list up to at least eleven - depending on whether or not it fell for V3-layabout Sneak's suggestion that asylum seeking rabid foxes were living in BT's copper pipe, waiting patiently to desecrate the Diana memorial.

The Mail has been speaking to psychologists who must have run out of people to confuse and irritate, and decided to let us know that kids who look at Facebook while revising are likely to do worse than those that do not.

The study behind the Mail article reveals, "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." Something that suggests that your children are not safe in a house where there is a computer on - nevermind if they are actually looking at it.

The author of the study, Paul Kirschner, told the Mail, "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."

What next, we wonder? 'People use Facebook to skive off at work' shocka?

07 Sep 2010