Facebook is currently distracting you from your homework, this newspaper, and reality
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Student Life
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Thus, like our sweater experiment, we decided to do some social research. Eight students were selected to document their Facebook activity Monday through Friday last week. They tallied their log-ins, recorded their activities while using Facebook, and delivered testimonials about how it affected their academic productivity.
The players were senior Caitlin Piat, sophomore Ben Bechle, freshman Louis Colletti, freshman David Ketchum, sophomore Janessa Gac, our own Features/Student Life Editor Nick Nelson, junior Nadine Altmann, and junior Tyler Thiesfeldt.
Now, we could bog you down with all kinds of numbers describing the amount of time people spent on Facebook, but we'll simply sum it up for you: individuals waste an awful lot of time on the website, with our test group averaging 110 minutes per day, the equivalent of an average-length Hollywood film.
Monday and Wednesday were where log-in hours peaked, and the lowest amount of time spent on Facebook happened to be on Thursday.
One reason, we concluded, is Monday and Wednesday nights follow the Tuesday/Thursday class schedule the next day, which for many students at Lakeland is less rigorous than their Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
This might mean students spend less time on Facebook and/or are more productive on Thursday nights. Friday is an exception to the rule of the M/W/F schedule since it is the start of the weekend. Facebook doesn't seem to be a distraction to social life. Perhaps Facebook weekend party invites are actually working?
We believe it is possible that students were shocked when they found how much time they spent (wasted?) on Facebook during the week, which could explain the shorter time spent on Tuesday and Thursday. However, it doesn't explain Wednesday. We figure Hump day must be a struggle for students (sucky).
Most of the students spent a large portion of their time on Facebook's new chat feature, which was added a few months ago. It seems Facebook chat is much more convenient than managing AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! messaging programs. Perhaps Facebook will replace these older IM applications altogether. You don't have to install FB chat on a computer, either, so students can chat during class lectures on school computers, though that is not highly recommended (but it's a thousand times better than Solitaire).
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