College students who use Facebook have significantly lower grade point averages (GPA) than those who do not.

According
to the study by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State
University and her co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican
University, students who express their membership regularly to the
200-million-member social network do worse in school tests. "In fact,
the majority of them who Facebook daily do worse by as much as one
whole grade," said the researchers.

Karpinski said, "our study shows people who spend more time on
Facebook spend less time studying. Every generation has its
distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon."

The study, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the
American Education Research Association on April 16, surveyed 219
undergraduate and graduate students and found that the GPAs of Facebook
users typically ranged a full grade lower than those of nonusers — 3.0
to 3.5 for users versus 3.5 to 4.0 for their non-networking peers.