Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

A Kansas State University graduate student found that women and students with lower grade point averages are using Facebook more than men and students with higher GPAs.

Facebook has 7.4 million registered users nationwide and 23,484 users in Kansas. It is an on-line community for high school students, college students and alumni. The user registers with their school e-mail address and puts as little or as much personal information on their account as they please. This information is accessed by other users without permission or with it, depending on the security level the user sets.

The question K-State graduate student Matthew Boogart set out to ask early this spring through an on-line survey was why students use Facebook. The preliminary results of the survey released last week showed that students use it to check up on one another.

“The majority use it to keep track of friends from high school, sometimes to meet new people,” Boogart said. To Boogart’s surprise, the more interesting question answered is not why Facebook is used but who is using it.

“Women use it more than men, students with lower GPAs use it more than those with higher ones, lower classmen use it more than upper classmen, students of color more than white students,” Boogart said.

In a recent survey, women confessed more than men that they feel addicted to facebook. Surveyor Matthew Boogart found other discrepencies between minorities in his research. Source: Matthew Boogart.

The survey showed that 36.2% of students using Facebook have a GPA of 2.99 or lower. These numbers suggest to Boogart that Facebook could be lowering academics.

These claims are not recognized by Facebook. Chris Hughes, Facebook spokesman, said he has no reason to believe the site is used disproportionately among students.

“No study has ever reached similar conclusions to my knowledge,” Hughes said. “The site has incredible penetration at the colleges on the network and does not tend to be used by certain communities or “types” of people.”

While teaching her upper level communications class, Tracy Russo, assistant professor in the communication studies department, asked her students how many who use Facebook looked at it six to 12 times a day. “Almost everyone said they had friends who did,” Russo said. “The looks on their faces suggested that they never thought about the impact it could have on their grades.”

Boogart wrote a survey and e-mailed it to nearly 17,000 students at four universities to gain information about on-line communities and Facebook in particular. The results were so overwhelming that Boogart decided to throw out the other information, and focus on Facebook. He sent the survey to 3,600 students at the University of Kansas; 1,600 participated.

Of the total number of students invited to take the survey, 19 percent responded. But nearly 100 percent of those who did respond are registered on Facebook.

Other participating universities were K-State, the University of Florida and Samford University in Alabama.

One survey question asked if the user was addicted to Facebook. On a scale ranked strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree, 37.1% of women marked agree or strongly agree as opposed to 18.7% of men.

The University of New Mexico blocked Facebook from all campus computers at the start of the fall semester last year. “The site was blocked because it was poorly secured and because the site's home page design did not make it clear that they should not use their UNM password,” Steve Carr, public affairs at UNM said.

After revisions to the site, UNM unblocked Facebook at the start of the spring semester.

Like UNM, Russo worries about the accessibility to student information through Facebook. “It’s as private as a postcard,” Russo said. “Identity theft, stalkers, it’s the perfect opportunity for them.”

Heather Nichols, Maryland junior, said she uses it about every other day for less than a half hour to keep in touch with friends she never sees. Nichols thinks the popularity and use of Facebook is a fad. “It’s kind of like the new IM,” she said.

Boogart disagrees. “It is never going to go away. We may as well figure out what role it is playing in student’s lives,” he said.

Boogart would like to do follow up research on the survey results to see how it is affecting academics.