PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Research conducted in the US has suggested that students who used Facebook while working obtained exam results an average of 20 per cent lower than those who did not.
Professor Paul Kirschner reported on a survey of 219 students aged between 19 and 54 in a paper to be published in the Computers in Human Behaviour academic journal. Three quarters of those who used social networking while revising said that they didn’t it was affecting their studies.
Seemingly backing up earlier research which had shown that people that multi-task tended to actually be worse at task-switching than those which did not, Kirschner said: "While people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes."
The students that used Facebook achieved a "grade point average" of 3.06 out of four, versus students who remained focused on revising achieving an average study score of 3.82.
