Alan+Editorial

Alan Rodriguez December 15, 2010 **Facebook Depriving our Intelligence? ** It's nine p.m., and I'm currently in the computer room of the dormitory. I attend an all-boy boarding school and a typical hobby from nine to ten thirty for most students is to waste their time on Facebook. Students literally spend an hour and a half staring at pictures of girls, posting unnecessary comments, and chatting about the homework they should be doing. Unfortunately I'm a victim of Facebook. I noticed how a quick five minute check on other people's status easily turns into an hour of useless socializing. But can this issue get any bigger?...Yes. Facebook affects student's intelligence and real life communicating skills because it distracts its users.

The bad usage of Facebook seems harmless for it's a website meant for people to communicate with friends, teachers, and classmates. But the bad usage affects students by reducing their intelligence and distracting them into a world where nothing else exist. In “[|Study:Facebook users get lower grades in college]” by Sharon Gaudin we see how a study from Ohio State University shows that students who use Facebook generally have a GPA between 3.0 and 3.5. They also study between one and five hours. Nonusers have a GPA between 3.5 and 4 and study between eleven to fifteen hours. Not only are users getting distracted but it makes one start bad habits because of the liberty Facebook provides in posting status. Grammatical mistakes such as “Were is the party at?” makes a student look dumb because it's something that's taught at a very young age. We should focus on what we post on Facebook so that we can make our virtual world as advanced as possible.

A social network lets people communicate through the computer but excessive use of socializing through Facebook weakens kids real life communication. In an article named “[|Facebook, MySpace, Twitter: Good or Bad for Kid's Brain?]” we see that Susan Adele Greenfield, a neuroscientist of Oxford university, believes Facebook detracts students from learning how to communicate. She commented “If kids communicate primarily through the screen they do not learn the subtleties of real life communication - such as body language, tone of voice, and subconsciously sensing the molecules that other people release.” We can be ignorant all we want but it doesn't take a neuroscientist to show us that people who are most addicted are the most speech deprived with real life communication.

Facebook isn't a website that is meant to lessen a man’s intelligence. Parents, advise your son or daughter to use Facebook the right way by communicating with peers or teachers and to focus on what they post. Facebook can help a student, but with the liberty that one has with a social network, it can also worsen a students knowledge and maybe even take you to the highest cloud and leave you there with no way out. Let your kids know that Facebook is a tool and with any other tool you need to use it for your advantage. Acquiring that can take one’s academic aspirations to new levels.