This story truly begs a question: Why would anyone past the age of 11 or 12 be distracted from academia by something as trite, pointless, childish and just plain silly as the Facebook site in the first place? Now there's a sociological study that sorely needs to be undertaken!

As a university student myself, I can say that facebook has no correlation to grades. You could argue that facebook is a distraction from studying (as pointed out by the article)but this does not distinguish facebook from other sources of academic distractions.

I think society has to understand that university education is not right for everyone and that a college education is just as good for people who doesn't want to be pressured to study subjects they don't care about and receive a degree that they don't want.

I think this study is one that could be of great academic benefit... to a university-level statistics course looking at examples of poor experimental design!

Facebook may be a new arrival in the scheme of things, but in my own anecdotal experiences, a student looking to procrastinate will find a way, be it social networking on a computer or in a pub.

It would be interesting to see this study repeated with proper controls and sample sizing, though. I'd also be interested in seeing whether interactive technology in general is a distraction.

Ummmmm, a response to an earlier post. As a student, my life is not entirely based in "acadamia" (although it seems like it sometimes). It's nice to take a break from endless hours of studying every now and then to talk to friends or play some "silly" games. I don't know if you've seen the price of stamps or phone plans lately, but Facebook is a fast, cheap way for me to communicate with people who don't live near me. I think some people need to get their heads out of the Dark Ages and realize the benefits of technology. Grades are not everything.

Not to be rude brandon but when you are in university grades are everything if you fail then you dont get what you were going for and end up slinging fries for a living. Facebook may be a problem for some people but it makes for a good break every hour or so of hard work.

I think what we need to realize here is that yes this is a perfect example of a poorly planned study and yes, no matter what happens everyone will find a way to slack off. But it also brings up a few interesting points: 1 - are students spending not enough time on their book education or are they actually learning in other ways?. 2 - is it really Facebook or are there other problems. 3 - is it about time that we face the fact that the younger generation is capable of a larger degree of multi-tasking and possibly incapable of avoiding it?

Wow, what a completely useless study. It's called selection bias. Take two students, one cares about school - the other does not. Which one is more likely to use facebook? This is what the study is capturing. Guess what, if you do the same study but instead of facebook use you look at who uses a tutor you will find that the grades of people who use a tutor are much lower (probably lower than those who use facebook). Should we ban tutoring?? Or maybe education PhD's should learn how to properly design studies.