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| TECHNO TRENDS -With NIGEL JAMESON |
| IS FACEBOOK GOOD OR BAD FOR YOU? |
| By Bill Thompson |
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The examination period is always stressful,
both for those sitting GCSEs, A levels and the International
Baccalaureate and for their parents and siblings who
get 'second-hand stress' without even a certificate
to show for their efforts. My friends and I used to
revise together, hoping that it would create enough
social pressure to keep us working through the evening,
but being in the same room is clearly no longer required.
My daughter, in the midst of IB exams, and my son, facing
GCSEs next week, have email, instant messaging and of
course Facebook and other social network sites to keep
in touch with their school mates and share revision
tips and exam guidance. Some revising schoolchildren
probably found their access to Facebook severely curtailed
last month, however, after The Sun revealed that those
who checked the site every day dropped a grade in their
studies while heavy users were doing as little as an
hour of school work a week.
The story was far from exclusive to The Sun, as a quick
search of Google News reveals. It made dozens of papers
and websites, including The Times, The Calgary Herald,
and The Australian, which told its readers that "Facebook
fixation harms student grades" and referred worried
readers to a Sydney University-based group called "I
want to sue Facebook if I fail university". Social
networking scare stories are becoming increasingly popular,
perhaps because the internet remains strange and mysterious
despite its popularity while the long term impact of
the network on our society is only just becoming apparent.
Journalists, who probably have more to fear from the
growth of social tools and conversational media than
most, may also be keen to highlight the dangers of the
new technologies. So we see absurd stories like the
Daily Mail's recent claim that "using Facebook
could raise your risk of cancer", stories that
entertain and frighten readers in equal measure by combining
carefully selected psychological research with unfounded
speculation to create a tale that has no basis in fact
but aligns perfectly with widespread fears about new
technologies.
This could also explain the love-hate relationship with
Twitter in the press, where the service is a dull and
tedious celebrity circus one day, and a cool way to
stay in touch the next. Facebook's impact on academic
grades seemed to be different, however, as it was backed
up by some real science. The findings were based on
a survey of 219 students at Ohio State University carried
out by doctoral student Aryn Karpinski and Adam Duberstein
of Ohio Dominican University and presented to a prestigious
meeting of the American Education Research Association,
which is as scientific as the media gets. But of course
things are never as straightforward as they seem, and
the research which looked so conclusive in the pages
of The Sun is actually far from definitive. Karpinski's
presentation, "A Description of Facebook Use and
Academic Performance Among Undergraduate and Graduate
Students," was not an invited peer-reviewed paper
but a less formal poster session at the conference.
The data showing a correlation between Facebook use
and academic performance had not been published, and
most of the news coverage seems to have been based on
reading the abstract of the session without looking
at the detail. "Very basic" The press coverage
prompted further investigation, and in an article for
the online journal First Monday Josh Pasek, Eian More
and Eszter Hargittai describe how they analysed data
from other studies to see if Facebook did have the claimed
effect on grades. They found no support for Karpinski's
findings, noting instead that "if anything, Facebook
use is more common among individuals with higher grades."
Karpinski then defended her work, noting that "my
exploratory study and subsequent poster presentation
were very basic. I merely planned to do this... to get
some ideas and network with more experienced researchers
in this area." She also took the time to consider
the methods used in the other surveys, offering a detailed
and technical critique that demonstrates just how complex
this area is. This is real science, and it has to be
done if we are to establish a sound basis for our understanding
of these new technologies. Talking about coding methods
and regression analyses may not be exciting for headline
writers, but it is at the heart of this current debate.
None of the newspapers and websites that were so keen
to exaggerate the original claims seem interested in
following the real scientific debate, with the honourable
exception of Carl Bialik in the Wall Street Journal
who was careful to discuss the limitations of the original
research and said right from the start that the area
needed more study.
The press move on to another scare story, the impression
that Facebook is bad for your studies remains, and the
detailed research that will help us understand the emerging
network society remains unread and unremarked upon.
Perhaps we will have to wait for the semantic web and
intelligent search, so that anyone calling up a dodgy
article about the dangers of social networking is forced
to review the latest academic research before they proceed. |
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