The Context of College Students’ Facebook Use and Academic Performance - An Empirical Study

Explore an empirical study examining the relationship between college students' Facebook usage and their academic performance in this 20-minute conference talk from the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Delve into the research conducted by Yiran Wang and Gloria Mark, which challenges previous assumptions about Facebook's negative impact on grades. Learn about their methodology using automatic logging and experience sampling to capture unbiased, detailed use patterns and investigate the context of Facebook use among 50 college students. Discover surprising findings that suggest frequent Facebook users' GPAs do not necessarily suffer, and how high-achieving students tend to have shorter Facebook sessions, often following periods of schoolwork. Gain insights into the possibility that problematic Facebook use may be more closely associated with leisure activities rather than study time interruptions.