According to the most-recent Ohio State University study, college students, who are regular Facebook users, end up having lower overall grades vis-à-vis the non-users. Nonetheless, the 'Facebook-grades' connection is just a perceived one, with other reasons also to be considered for lower grades.

The survey, which observed 219 Ohio State students, and questioned them particularly about Facebook - leaving out social networking sites like Twitter and Myspace -, found that students studying science, technology, engineering, math and business used Facebook much more frequently than those studying the humanities and social sciences.

As per the Ohio State survey statistics, Facebook is frequently used by 85 percent of undergraduate students; and 52 percent of graduates. Furthermore, Facebook users, who usually studied between 1-5 hours a week, had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5; as against GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0 of the non-users, who generally devote 11-15 hours a week to their studies.

The study raises pertinent questions with regard to after-class activities of students, including time spent on Facebook, part-time jobs and extracurricular activities. Still, Aryn Karpinski - an education researcher at Ohio State and the study co-author - clarified the correlation between Facebook and poorer college grades as follows: "I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied."