LONDON - A research has confirmed what many parents and teachers already feared: social networking site Facebook is damaging students’ academic performance.

As per a new research into the academic impact of Facebook, users of the site are likely to perform poorly in exams.

The researchers discovered that the majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site.

In order to reach their conclusion, researchers discovered how students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work.

“Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,” The Times quoted Aryn Karpinski, a researcher in the education department at Ohio State University, as saying.

“Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon,” the expert added.

In the study, Karpinski and a colleague questioned 219 US undergraduates and graduates about their study practices and general internet use, as well as their specific use of Facebook.

They found that 65 percent of Facebook users accessed their account daily, usually checking it several times to see if they had received new messages. The amount of time spent on Facebook at each log-in varied from just a few minutes to more than an hour.

The Ohio report shows that 68 percent of students who used Facebook had a “significantly” lower grade point average than those who did not use the site.

“It is the equivalent of the difference between getting an A and a B,” said Karpinski, who will present her findings this week to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. (ANI)