Social media’s hindering effects

By Ben Gladstone

Facebook and its influence on schoolwork is a very controversial topic amongst high school students. Can one social-networking site be blamed for the broader problem of poor time management?

“You see everything your friends are doing, so you want to get involved,” said senior Sam Shapiro. “You want to say something or do something. You want to keep checking something or updating something. Yeah, it’s really distracting.”

Senior Zach Albert agreed with Shapiro.

“Facebook is masterful at providing useful information for useless distractions,” said Albert.

Many students expressed similar feelings, finding themselves prey to the distractions of Facebook.

“I’ll be online, telling myself that I’m going to check something for my homework, and then I’ll end up on Facebook, looking at everything while I’m doing my homework,” said freshman Tate Mitchell. “And then it won’t be homework anymore.”

But not everyone is distracted by Facebook.

“When I do work, I separate myself from the Internet, and then I use Facebook after I’m done with my homework,” said freshman Noah VanderWerf.

Sophomore Elan Kawesch feels that his distraction level depends on what he is working on.

“If I’m trying to write a long essay or something, it’s kind of distracting,” said Kawesch. “But if I’m doing a worksheet for math or whatever, it’s not really that distracting because you can just get stuff done fast.”

Freshman Olivier Sweet said that he is more distracted by YouTube than he is by Facebook, and that whenever he logs onto Facebook, the amount of time he spends on the site is very small.

“Sometimes I use it if I forgot homework or if I wasn’t in school that day,” said Sweet. “I can talk to friends who are in that class and find out what the homework was.”

Sweet, like others, uses Facebook for academic purposes, whether that means greater convenience working on a group project or ability to ask for a missing assignment.

In 2009, Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University published a study sampling 200 college students and found that the average GPA of Facebook users was a full grade point lower than that of non-users.

“Some people can use it responsibly, other people don’t use it responsibly, but it shouldn’t affect your grade point average,” said junior Zoe Musmon. “It’s completely separate from school.”

Junior Thomasa Hagney was less surprised by the study’s results.

“I say that makes sense,” said Hagney, “since I spend most of my time on Facebook and most of my time not doing homework because of it.”

Others, like junior Amanda Mathieu, questioned the veracity of the study.

“That seems like a huge difference,” said Mathieu. “I find that hard to believe.”