According to a new study by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University, college students who use Facebook have significantly lower grade-point averages (GPAs) than those who do not.
The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association on April 16. 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.
Karpinski says that the study does not suggest that Facebook directly causes lower grades, but that there's some relationship between the two factors. "Maybe [Facebook users] are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators," Karpinski told TIME.com in a phone interview on Monday, April 13.
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