Hope is not lost

In a previous post I brought to your attention a small study that was conducted by a graduate student at THE Ohio State University showing a correlation between Facebook use and lower GPA's in college students. That little piece of research, apparently, has generated quite a bit of buzz, and USA Today is now reporting on a follow-up study conducted by a group of researchers that seems to show no correlation between academic performance and Facebook use:

The newer research, published this week in an online journal First Monday, found no "robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades. Indeed. If anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades." Northwestern University professor Eszter Hargittai, Stanford doctoral candidate Josh Pasek and Eian More, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed three existing data sets, including a sample of more than 1,000 undergraduates from the University of Illinois-Chicago and other data involving teens and young adults. [...]

In a statement published in First Monday, the authors of the larger study said they were motivated to "set the record straight" because of the surge of public interest generated by the media. "Our primary criticism of the...study was not in reference to her results, but rather to the process of alerting the mass media without probability-based sampling, replication or comprehensive peer review."

More from the Google Overlords

Google is continuing its march towards world domination. As Farhad Manjoo reports at Slate.com, the world's largest search engine is adding the profiles of registered users to search results. The rationale for this? According to Google, it's a chance for people to have greater control over what comes up when someone searches for their name (or, probably more often, what comes up when someone conducts a "vanity search" for their own name).

The conspiracy theory, though, is that Google actually intends to use this profile information to set up a social networking service to rival giants like Facebook and MySpace:

If the speculation proves true, Google's plan would be both deviously brilliant and also a little scary. Why would Google want a social network? To get to know you better—and, thus, to serve you more profitable ads. Google has long made gobs of money by running ads based on search keywords—if you search for "shoes," Google runs spots for Zappos and DSW, and it makes a few cents if you click on them. But last month Google announced that it would join many of its rival Web companies in adopting "behavioral targeting," a method of serving ads that relies on a much more extensive picture of your online activity. In the future, instead of showing you an ad targeted simply to your search keyword, Google might look at everything it has learned about you over an extended period of time in order to give you a message better-tailored to your interests. If you type in "shoes," Google might be able to tell if you're a nurse who lives in New York or a construction worker who lives in Miami—and would show you shoe ads customized to your character. [...]

Here's where the social network might come in. Google already knows a lot about you; through its search engine, its vast advertising network, and its many Web applications (Gmail, YouTube, etc.), the company can probably already glean enough information about a Web surfer to be able to tell the difference between a nurse and a construction worker. But a Google social network would add one more dimension to the picture—it could mine your relationships, too.

Manjoo goes on to explain that, while advertising on social networking sites isn't an extremely profitable venture, Google would have a competitive edge over the established sites...lots and lots of personal information about lots and lots of individual users, which it plans to couple with the motivation of people wanting to make sure that their name is "well Googled":

...Google controls a much larger swath of the Web than its rivals. Facebook can use what it knows about your relationships to serve you targeted ads on—well, pretty much just on Facebook. That isn't much use, because people aren't very interested in commerce when they're checking in with their friends. But Google operates the Web's most far-reaching advertising network, so whatever it learns about you while you're interacting with your friends can be used to target you later on, while you're in some more ad-friendly part of the Web—when you're reading the New York Times, or watching YouTube, or searching for a Mother's Day present. By using your "social graph" as just one factor in a much larger behavioral profile, the company could finally turn social-networking into a killer business.

[...] Google doesn't necessarily need to build a social network that you find fun—that is, it doesn't have to build an alternative to Facebook. Instead, all it really needs is to get you to tell it more about your connections. I'll bet that a promise of improved vanity search results will be enough to bring a lot of people on board. Indeed, even if you're not so vain, it makes good sense to set up a page on Google. A Google Profile is a good way to present your best side to potential employers, prospective dates, future in-laws, or your parole board—anyone you'd like to impress. Why wouldn't you sign up?

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Facebook use linked to lower grades

If you know me then you understand that I'm a fan of Facebook. I've listed it as one of my favorite Internet things. I've shared relevant pointless YouTube videos which it was the topic of. I've engaged in thoughtful discussion of the sociological ramifications of the world's largest social networking website. I've even set it up so that the 5 or 6 of you that actually read this blog can become my fans if you want.

So I'm sure you'll understand my disappointment when I read this, which was published a couple of weeks ago on ScienceDaily (via Freakonomics):

College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university. [...]

While this was a relatively small, exploratory study, it is one of the first to find a relationship between college students’ use of Facebook and their academic achievement.

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.

Personally I can't believe it. It doesn't make sense to me that an engaging technology that provides instant gratification from almost any location by bombarding the senses with an incomprehensible amount of information and quasi-addictive applications could possibly be distracting late adolescents/young adults from their studies. This doesn't necessarily mean Facebook is bad, though, as the study's author is quick to point out that correlation does not, necessarily, prove cause and effect:

“We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there,” said Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in education at Ohio State University. [...]

Karpinski emphasized that the results don’t necessarily mean that Facebook use leads to lower grades.

“There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades,” she said.

“It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.”

It should be noted that this is a relatively small pilot study. What this means is that they'll use the data collected to design a larger, more conclusive study. It all involves math and statistical algorithms. I'd explain it in more detail, but I don't have time. I have to update my Facebook status...

Facebook Sociology

Okay, so Facebook makes you more social, right?

Actually, according to a recent article published in The Economist, that might not actually be the case. You see, sociologist have, for quite awhile, thought that there is a limit to the number of people that can form a meaningful social group:

Several years ago...Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist who now works at Oxford University, concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Extrapolating from the brain sizes and social networks of apes, Dr Dunbar suggested that the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148. Rounded to 150, this has become famous as “the Dunbar number”.

You see, while many Facebook users make it a (very annoying) habit of responding yes to every friend request that they get, the average number of friends across all users is relatively small, and the number of "friends" that an average user will actually interact with is even smaller:

The rise of online social networks, with their troves of data, might shed some light on these matters. So The Economist asked Cameron Marlow, the “in-house sociologist” at Facebook, to crunch some numbers. Dr Marlow found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120, consistent with Dr Dunbar’s hypothesis, and that women tend to have somewhat more than men. But the range is large, and some people have networks numbering more than 500, so the hypothesis cannot yet be regarded as proven.

What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group.

Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

So, surpirisingly, while Facebook might allow you to connect with (and broadcast your life to) an excessively large number of people, the social "norms" that humanity has established seem to be holding steady. From the dawn of our species to the explosion of cyberspace, humans have remained...well...human.

25 things

I've got a couple of Facebook posts for today. The first is a video that I thought was pretty funny:

Mistermagette on Facebook

Mistermagette is now on Facebook! As part of my ongoing experiments with this here Internet thing, I've decided to play around with a virtual classroom environment on Facebook. "Mistermagette" is set up as a business, which will allow me to (hopefully) use the application to communicate with students without having to share personal profile information.

So check it out...be one of the first to become a "fan". Write on the wall. Start a discussion. Just don't do it at school!

My Favorite Web Things

1. Google: Love it. Love it. Love it. I had a conversation with another teacher one day, and decided that a) Google was going to take over the world one day, and b) we would both gladly submit to its' rule.

2. iGoogle: If Google is the ice-cream sundae, then iGoogle is the cherry on top. Everytime I start up my browser I'm greated with my favorite search engine, customized weather, current news headlines, e-mail, favorite bookmarks, and a variety of customizable tickers, games, newsfeeds and other widgets. So not only can set back and let the Internet make me lazy, but now I actually don't have to take the time and energy to navigate through different pages and sites.

3. Digg: If you're not "Digging", then you should check it out. It allows you to submit websites, stories, blogs, videos, flickr photos, etc. to a social site where others can view them. By establishing networks of friends and fans, you can see what other people are reading. It's a lot of fun, and a great way to find content that doesn't always make the front pages. (By the way, if you're registered with Digg, feel free to click the "Digg" button on any of my posts to submit them.)

4. Facebook: Okay, I admit that at 30-something I'm not really the target demographic for the king of all social networking sites. But for people my age this site is a great way to re-establish contact with, and keep in touch with, old friends. BTW...I don't accept friend requests from students.

5. Google Reader: Another part of the Google Universe. Google reader allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds from frequently updated websites. What this means, in simple terms, is that when your favorite websites or blogs are updated, the new information is sent directly to your Google Reader page. This makes it possible to keep track of dozens of websites without constantly clicking through a list of bookmarks. And, if you have an iGoogle start page, your Google reader updates can be read directly from there!