Perhaps Facebook Really Does Make People Dumber: “typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.”

I would question, though, what sort of similar results we might get with most technological mediums. As The Dane points out here, the viability and hurtfulness of a medium is determined only by those using it. Just like my huge biceps. I could use them for good or for evil. But if I carry out evil, no one will go around outlawing my huge biceps. (for the record I have nothing close to huge biceps)

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Richard Clark

Richard Clark is the Founding Editor of Christ and Pop Culture. He is also the managing editor of Gamechurch and a freelance writer for Unwinnable, Paste, and other outlets. He lives with his wife in Louisville, KY and has a MA in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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2 Comments

  1. I would agree–completely–Facebook itself makes no one dumber–abuse of Facebook, however, aids many in their own pursuit of dumbness.

    Thanks for the link–obviously I am having fun here. I like Facebook, but I do think its interesting that Facebook users had significantly lower GPAs, even among graduate students.

    Drews last blog post..Perhaps Facebook Really Does Make People Dumber!

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  2. Hm. This study hearkens back to Noble Alan’s post about research studies—as its premise is inane. The study is so specific that it doesn’t really have anything to tell us about anything.

    How many of those participating in the study would be considered internet users (the kind of people who follow news or blogs or whathaveyou via the internet) and is the internet-user vs. non-internet-user ratio similar to the GPA ratio cited?

    What about those with robust social lives? Does the GPA study ratio correlate with a study on the GPAs of those with robust social lives vs. the GPAs of shut-ins?

    Are the internet illiterate the biggest GPA winners of them all?

    How do the GPA numbers stack with people who have time-consuming interests outside of study vs. people without such? Do filmlovers and social media users fall in the same category? Gamers? Athletes? People in relationships vs. people without?

    As to the infantalizing of the contemporary mind that the tech-fearful keep bemoaning, Umberto Eco says this (in the first essay collected in On Literature):

    These days many lament the birth of a new “telegraphese,” which is being foisted on us through e-mail and mobile-phone text messages, where one can even say “I love you” with short-message symbols; let us not forget that the youngsters who send messages in this new form of shorthand are, at least in part, the same young people who crowd those new cathedrals of the book, the multistory bookstores, and who, even when they flick through a book without buying it, come into contact with cultivated and elaborate literary styles to which their parents, and certainly their grandparents, had never been exposed.

    The Danes last blog post..20090414.zombieBears

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