Using Facebook Can (Hey! That's Cool!) Result in - Something

"Using Facebook 'can lower exam results by up to 20%' "
MailOnline (September 7, 2010)

"It is what parents of teenagers who 'revise' in front of the computer have long feared.

"Students who use Facebook while they study get significantly lower grades than those who do not, according to psychologists.

"A study has found that the exam results of those who used the social networking site while working, even if it was on in the background, were 20 per cent lower than non-users.

"Researchers say the findings undermine the theory that young people's brains are better at multitasking on digital gadgets.

"Study author Professor Paul Kirschner said: 'The problem is that most people have Facebook or other social networking sites, their emails and maybe instant messaging constantly running in the background while they are carrying out other tasks.

" 'Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes.'..."

The Lemming wishes to point out that this blogger has nothing against Facebook, or social networks in general. On the other hand, I don't pretend to "multitask."

I'll have social networking active in the background during some tasks - while I'm 'doing research' (surfing the Web) for these posts, for example. That's partly because I'll occasionally see something interesting mentioned. Like this MailOnline article. (Thanks, RBLevin!) But when the Lemming is writing one of these things, social networking goes off the screen.

My guess is that talking on the phone while reading that statistics textbook, or watching television while studying algebra isn't a terribly good idea, either.

Appealing - even tempting - as the idea is.

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A tip of the hat to RBLevin, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this article.