New Study Says Social Networks Not Making Kids Stay Up Late

from the no,-that-would-be-sms dept

Wed, Jan 20th 2010 4:56am — Mike Masnick

While there were some studies last year claiming that heavy social networking users were likely to have lower grades (though, there were lots of problems with that study), it apparently isn't because it keeps kids up late at night. A new study that looked at students and their social networking habits didn't find much difference in the amount of sleep heavy social network users got vs. those who weren't spending all their time on Facebook and Twitter. My guess is that, with both of these things, there are so many other factors that finding any sort of causal relationship is unlikely in a simple comparison of two variables. There could be many other factors that lead to either good or bad grades, and also impact how much a person uses social networks or the amount of sleep they get. And, in the end, looking for something to blame for either really misses the point. It's an attempt to blame a technology for something else, rather than look at the real underlying reasons why a student doesn't get enough sleep or doesn't do well at school.

But, of course, don't expect that to stop the debate. As I was finishing up this post, along comes a different study that again notes a correlation between really heavy users and bad grades. But, the study also finds that for kids these days, they're pretty much online all the time somehow -- even more than the study's authors thought possible.

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Filed Under: grades, kids, sleep, social networks

13 Comments

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Dementia (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:35am

I use social networks fairly heavily now, but my grades in my college classes don't seem to be affected. Perhaps it has more to do with time management skills and the willingness of the students to study instead of something they enjoy more.
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reboog711 (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:47am

Parental Involvement
I tend to think that there is a huge correlation between parental involvement and a child's performance in school. I don't have numbers to back that up, though.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:48am

So do these two studies combined mean that stupid people heavily use social networking sites?
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Tyanna, 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:52am

Re: Parental Involvement
The parental involvement? But then...it might be the parents fault their child is getting bad grades...we can't have that! It must be social networking/video games/tv/comic books/etc.

Need something to blame....
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Aaron Von Gauss (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 6:39am

Parents
Social networking may not be making kids stay up late, but it sure seems to have an impact on how late their parent's stay up. Put kids to bed, log in to Facebook, click Mafia Wars......
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Troy A. Wilson Sr. (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 7:37am

Re: Parental Involvement
I agree. As a parent with 3 children who all have computer media centers in their rooms, I believe that the amount of parental involvement makes a huge difference. My wife an I place limits on screen time and enforce study time. As a result I have 3 honor roll students.
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Andy, 20 Jan 2010 @ 8:33am

Kids are going to stay up late no matter what. Be it facebook or videogames. It's inevitable.
http://www.novoparatus.com
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2010 @ 1:29pm

I love the fact that this story was posted at 4:15am...
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Michelle, 20 Jan 2010 @ 3:18pm

With access teenagers will use social media up late. I have a 16 year old living with us that proves this (not my son, my brother).
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social network design, 25 Jan 2010 @ 3:14am

I use social networks fairly heavily now, but my grades in my college classes don't seem to be affected
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anthony scander, 25 Jan 2010 @ 5:11pm

Social Networks and schools grades
I read all this stuff and to me it all sounded like
"blah blah blah"
All those studies are telling us the same thing
Parents have a big role to play - in positively discussing with their kids house rules around screen times and study times - then making these as regular as possible. Today its twitter and Chat tomorrow it will be some other new technology fad that all youngsters will want to follow. The only thing that has not changed over the years is kids have parents and parents need to learn "effective parental control"
Period.

Anything else is "blah blah blah - we need another study"

:-)
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SCole, 23 May 2010 @ 9:03am

time time time
I think the way to solve this problem is to have good time management skills. The parent involving is important but only to show/teach children how to get a correct equilibrium between social networking and studying.
Teens are having bad grades because they dont know how to manage time. They must learn that there is a time to be on FB, a time to sleep, and a time to study. Thats where parents come in, to guide them to this correct time managing.
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mattress, 28 May 2010 @ 11:10am

Strange...I would think that having such an over entertained society would lead to less sleep.
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