For college students spending too much time on Facebook, the results will show on your report cards, according to a new study conducted at Ohio State University.

The study’s co-author, Aryn Karpinski, clarifies that there are “many third variables that need to be studied,” but defends that a relationship does exist. Her study found that students who use Facebook tend to have GPAs in the 3.0-3.5 range and study one to five hours each week, while those who do not use Facebook have GPAs in the 3.5-4.0 range and study 11 to 15 hours each week.

She says Facebook might not be the guilty party, that this could be an indicator that students who in general study less and enjoy their free time will see a hit to their grades. The study also found that those who have jobs spend less time on Facebook, whereas those involved in more social activities and organizations are active on Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »

Man, I wish I had had Facebook when I was a college student!

Things have changed so much since when I was in college, way back in 1992, which, in terms of years, was not all that long ago, but in terms of technology, I may as well have gone to college with John McCain.  Here’s an article from Amherst College, where apparently 99 percent of all of their incoming students have Facebook pages. Only six members of the 2012 class have not joined the class group on Facebook.

In fact, this group of students at Amherst shares some pretty incredible statistics about the incoming Class of 2012 in general. While their incoming freshman class is made of only 438 students, these numbers must be indicative of technology trends across college campuses everywhere.

• One in two students are likely to be carrying an iPhone or an iPod Touch
• 370 people registered 443 iPhones, gaming units, etc.
• Only 14 brought desktop computers; 5 have landline phones
• Current classes of 2009 and 2010 are most likely to use Windows; classes of 2011 and 2012 are most likely using Mac

Read the rest of this entry »

How many people in your college classes have a landline? Unless they’re living at home with their grandparents, it’s likely to be slim to none. In fact, only one percent of Amherst College’s incoming class have a landline.

Given that this is an election year, phone lines having burning up with political pollers. These political polls are traditionally done via landline and a correlation between those who are conservative/Republican were most likely to have those landlines. Some are even suggesting that this means these polls are over-reporting Republican data and under-reporting Democratic data.

So the Pew Researchers (they call themselves a “nonpartisan fact tank”) became interested. They conducted three polls this year with young people, they defined as under 30,-  20-25 percent of those polled were contacted via mobile phone and their responses were put against the 75 percent reached on landlines.

What they found could have a serious effect on the future of polling via landlines:

Young people who use landlines are more likely to be Republican than young people who use mobile phones.

Do you think future pollsters will take this data into consideration? And do you think the polls currently in the media have been influenced by this?