Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data
Open accessAbstract
A recent draft manuscript suggested that Facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in college and graduate school (Karpinski, 2009). The report quickly became a media sensation and was picked up by hundreds of news outlets in a matter of days. However, the results were based on correlational data in a draft manuscript that had not been published, or even considered for publication. This paper attempts to replicate the results reported in the press release using three data sets: one with a large sample of undergraduate students from the University of Illinois at Chicago, another with a nationally representative cross sectional sample of American 14- to 22-year-olds, as well as a longitudinal panel of American youth aged 14-23. In none of the samples do we find a robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades. Indeed, if anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades. We also examined how changes in academic performance in the nationally representative sample related to Facebook use and found that Facebook users were no different from non-users.
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Frequent social media usage does not always have negative implications for academic performance.
“Importantly, frequent social media usage does not necessarily indicate social media addiction (Griffiths, 2010) and therefore does not always have negative implications for individuals’ mental health (e.g., Jelenchick, Eickhoff, & Moreno, 2013) or academic performance (Pasek & Hargittai, 2009).”
From Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention (2019) · cites this paper as Pasek & Hargittai, 2009
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Facebook and academic performance
Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2010) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.024 · Cited by 1,578 · see citing works
Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention
Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019) · Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace · doi:10.5817/cp2019-1-4 · Cited by 659 · see citing works
“Importantly, frequent social media usage does not necessarily indicate social media addiction (Griffiths, 2010) and therefore does not always have negative implications for individuals’ mental health (e.g., Jelenchick, Eickhoff, & Moreno, 2013) or academic performance (Pasek & Hargittai, 2009).”
BackgroundAhn, J. (2011) · Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.21540 · Cited by 356 · see citing works
Karpinski, A. C., Kirschner, P. A., Ozer, I., Mellott, J. A., & Ochwo, P. (2013) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.10.011 · Cited by 352 · see citing works
Bulman, G., & Fairlie, R. W. (2016) · Handbook of the Economics of Education · doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-63459-7.00005-1 · Cited by 284 · see citing works
Liu, D., Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2017) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.08.039 · Cited by 139 · see citing works
Is Facebook Making Us Dumber? Exploring Social Media Use as a Predictor of Political Knowledge
Cacciatore, M. A., Yeo, S. K., Scheufele, D. A., Xenos, M. A., Brossard, D., & Corley, E. A. (2018) · Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · doi:10.1177/1077699018770447 · Cited by 108 · see citing works
Exploring students’ purposes of usage and educational usage of Facebook
Manasijević, D., Živković, D., Arsić, S., & Milošević, I. (2016) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.087 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
Salari, N., Zarei, H., Rasoulpoor, S., Ghasemi, H., Hosseinian-Far, A., & Mohammadi, M. (2025) · Public Health in Practice · doi:10.1016/j.puhip.2025.100584 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pasek, J., More, E., & Hargittai, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- ORCID
- Hargittai, Eszter
- Venue
- First Monday
- Publisher
- University of Illinois Libraries
- Published
- 2009-04-26
- ISSN
- 1396-0458 (ISSN-L)
- 1396-0466
- OpenAlex
- W2138572964
- Cited by
- 268
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 16
- FWCI
- 37.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- First Monday (publishedVersion)
- First Monday (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Social Sciences › Demography › Cyberloafing and Workplace Behavior
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Outcomes and Influences
- Keywords
- Facebook use, social media, academic performance, replication, manuscript drafts, media sensationalism, undergraduate students, GRADE, longitudinal panel data
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