Those obnoxious Facebook users who collect friends like stamps and post a status update every other minute are more likely to stick it through college than less active users, a recent study suggests.
A study led by Abilene Christian University followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first-semester freshman students for nine months to examine how Facebook activity can be used as a predictor for a student's likelihood to stay in school. The research found that students who returned to school after freshman year had significantly more Facebook friends and wall posts than those who didn't return.*
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Rather than being an escape from reality, social media may mirror real life: More actively connected students on Facebook were most likely also connectors in the real world."The study was able to show that these students who are more active on Facebook are also out there getting involved, making new friends and taking part of activities that the university provides for them," said Jason Morris, an assistant professor of education and director of higher education at Abilene Christian, who authored the research article.
The study, only recently published by the Journal of College Student Retention, focused on students from fall of 2006 to summer of 2007. Students who opted to continue on to their sophomore year had, on average, 27 more friends and 59 more wall posts than those who dropped out, according to the study.
For other variables, Abilene Christian measured the number of Facebook groups joined and photo albums posted by the students, but the statistical differences were negligible. Researchers determined that wall posts and the number of Facebook friends were the most significant predictors for determining a user's Facebook activeness, which in turn reflected their enthusiasm in the academic world surrounding them.
Abilene Christian's study emerges at an interesting time when researchers and technologists are debating over whether technologies such as social networking sites and smartphones are bringing people together or isolating them. In another recent study, University of Michigan researchers found that today's college students are significantly less empathetic than college students of the 1980s and 1990s, based on surveys measuring empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.
The University of Michigan researchers theorized that the drop in empathy might be due to students' excessive exposure of media, such as violent videogames, which "numbs people to the pain of others." They also suggested that perhaps connecting with friends online makes it easier to shut out real-world issues.
"The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behavior that could carry over offline," said Edward O'Brien, a University of Michigan graduate student who helped with the study.
However, Abilene Christian's Facebook study led researchers to different interpretations. They believe that rather than sites like Facebook being an escape from reality, it's actually a mirror for their real-life interactions. The students who were more actively connecting with people on Facebook were most likely already connectors in the real world.
"At the time we did this study, the big debate was whether or not the Facebook world was a virtual pseudo social world or whether or not it actually reflected real world relationships," said Richard Beck, associate professor and chair of psychology at Abilene Christian, who came up with the idea of the Facebook study. "[The study] all seemed to indicate that what was going on Facebook was paralleling their social experience on campus. Rather than replacing it, it was mirroring it."
Abilene Christian's study is also an example of how social networking sites — as invasive to our privacy as they may be — can potentially serve as a window into human behavior more objective than surveys, Morris said.
"Instead of using [students'] perceptions, we remeasured ... with actual behaviors, which makes that a little more powerful as a study," Morris said.
Brian X. Chen is author of an upcoming book about the always-connected mobile future titled Always On, due for publication Spring 2011. To keep up with his coverage on Wired.com, follow @bxchen or @gadgetlab.
*Photo: *giuliomenna/Flickr
