I ve read your blog “is facebook for old people” and think you like the following video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LpaIXTKNuU

It is a vlog from Nerimon explaining why he hates Facebook and describing how all of his friends delete their myspace account and create a facebook one instead. (He has a facebook account himself btw)

Greetings,

Hanneke Mertens

Than “non-facebook users”? But what does that really mean? People who prefer other social media over facebook? People who never or rarely use social media at all?

I’m sensing a bit of conceptual slop in the way the issue is being framed. The sensible question would seem to be whether grades are correlated with degree of use of social media, and whether this effect differs based on the medium or media of choice. Framing it that way, it makes sense to investigate. The idea of “the effect of Facebook on grades” strikes me as one of those psuedo-notions that appears to mean something – until one thinks it through and discovers it means little or nothing.

One possible reason for a correlation of Facebook use with higher grades could be that Facebook users are known to be (to use a bit of teen slang ca 2004) “prep”. I.e. Academically skilled and conventionally achievement-oriented. Would it suprise anybody that preps get better grades than (say) gamers? But that would hardly be an effect of the Facebook medium on grades. Rather the better grades and the media choice would have a common cause in the subject’s personality and subcultural orientation.

These researchers need to be more clear about what questions they are asking before their results will be a useful contribution to the dialogue.

Just a thought,
-Steve

Aryn Karpinski’s response is here:
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2503/2183

Our response to her response is here:
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2504/2187

Anyhow, back in April, I communicated to parents that the Karpinsky’s study was only exploratory in nature. I found myself writing a piece on correlation and how, we can’t make any conclusions on causal effect (even with these follow-up studies. It will be a while longer before any conclusions can be made. I wrote more about this here:

http://www.examiner.com/x-5337-LA-Learning-Success-Examiner~y2009m4d18-Facebook-does-not-cause-lower-GPAs

for those interested.

I could not find Aryn Karpinsky’s response to the FM article. Is there another link for her response. I also was in communication with her during the conference and I (probably the only one at the time) actually read over her poster before publishing my article. If you could send me a link to her repsonse, that would be greatly appreciated. I hope to attach FM study to my April article.

Thanks so much. Grace

They should also provide confidence bounds for their estimates. Why brag about having probability samples (in two out of three-it sounds like the UIC study isn’t actually a “representative” probability sample), if don’t put them to use?

The class I let him talk to was my most articulate, but I had no idea they had thought long (and well) about incorporating Facebook, Twitter, blogging and texting in varying proportions according to their needs. I think they all have MySpace pages but abandoned them to some extent since middle school. Music brings them back there.

I feel that we may be looking at cases of successful adaptation rather than good grades versus bad grades. S Korean studies on obsessive behaviour may be an important tool.

I wonder if putting them into some kind of x dimensional vector map like Mail’s spam filter would be useful.

Jon, I just wanted to clarify that all of the analyses reported in these studies look at the difference between those who use Facebook at all versus those who do not. These analyses have not considered the implications of different amounts or different types of Facebook use. Those would be interesting areas for exploration.