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Can Facebook Predict Whether or Not You'll Graduate?

by Terrence O'Brien on August 19, 2010 at 03:10 PM

More Facebook Friends Means Graduation
File this under things impossible to prove, but a new study shows that, if you've got a lot of Facebook friends, you might actually be more likely to finish college. Abilene Christian University followed 375 college freshman for nine months, and tracked their social networking activity. What the university and its research partners found was that the students who returned for their sophomore year had slightly more friends and Wall posts than those who had decided to drop out. Researchers also tracked the number of photos posted and groups joined, but found no correlation between those activities and the likeliness that a student would return.

The suggestion is that students who were more active on Facebook were generally more involved at school, both socially and academically. Being more engaged in activities implied that a kid might be more invested in their education as well (although we suspect that rule would only apply to official and sanctioned activities). This data is, however, quite out of date. The research was actually performed during the 2006 to 2007 school year, but, for whatever reason, was not published until now. At the time, Facebook was still a young up-and-comer in the social networking market, and had only just opened up to members outside of colleges and universities. We suspect that, if this study were repeated today, the results might be less clear. [From: Wired, via: Geekosystem]

Tags: AbileneChristianUniversity, college, education, facebook, freshman, GraduationRates, SocialNetworking, top, web

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