Wait a minute, this can’t be true. In a StudyBlue survey conducted by SurveyU, students went on the record to say that they are much likelier to spend more than three hours studying online each day than participating in any other online activity, such as using Facebook (
) or other social networking sites. StudyBlue, an online academic network that aims to help students study smarter, used SurveyU’s high school and college student panel to survey about 1,500 students, ages 13 – 24, about their online study habits. While we expect students to actively use the web to enrich their study experience, we’re a little surprised that studying won out over social networking. After all, we use Facebook and Twitter (
The study found that 60% of students plan to study online three hours longer than doing anything else online, while only 26% of respondents predicted that they will spend more time online social networking than studying. Thankfully, 84% of surveyed students think the web has helped them perform more effectively and efficiently in school, and 54% have plans to increase their online studying habits this year over previous years.
A few other interesting stats from the survey:
College students are about twice as a likely to plan on spending 3 hours or more a day studying and doing homework online than they plan on going to social network sites (26%), communicating (email, IM, Chatting, etc…) (28%), or watching TV, Videos and online movies (22%)
College students are more than 6 times as likely to plan on spending 3 hours or more a day studying and doing homework online than they plan on spending playing online games (9%)
College students are three times as likely to plan on spending 3 hours or more a day studying and doing homework online than they plan on reading blogs/news and other content (18%)
On a semi-serious note, however, social media is proving to be an educational resource and utility, so even if students aren’t explicitly social networking as much as studying, they are likely using tools with lots of social baked in (and 3 out of 4 say they “would like a way to connect and share information online with others in their class.”)
In fact, even StudyBlue is touting an online service with collaboration tools and an iPhone app. Clearly, the boundary between online studying and social networking is blurred at best. But, regardless, we’re a little encouraged to know America’s youth is busy using the web for more constructive purposes than updating their status on Facebook.
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