MARK SANDVIG/SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES From left, Andrew Brinkerhoff, Will Ross and Bryan Jarrell are students at Grove City ...
Posted on 02/12/2009 3:11:09 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Last semester, Will Ross, 21, did the unthinkable. He deactivated his Facebook account. His friends began asking what happened to him.
"It was as if I'd disappeared or something," he said.
But Mr. Ross, a senior at Grove City College, in Grove City, Pa., would rather send hand-written letters or escape to a cabin in the woods than keep up with his friends' profile pictures. He joins a growing fragment of college students and professors across the country who are challenging technology trends.
At Grove City, a Christian college with a student body of about 2,500, it's not unusual to see students texting each other en route to class, taking class notes on their school-issued laptops or sending Facebook messages instead of walking across the dorm to talk to each other.
According to Maggie Jackson, author of "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age," almost one-third of 14- to 21-year-olds juggle five to eight different kinds of media while doing homework.
In a 2007 study conducted by the University of Minnesota, 41.8 percent of college students admitted that the overuse of technology negatively affected their academic performance.
Facebook, a social-networking site that connects more than 150 million people worldwide, was created in 2004 by Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, 24. It has risen to the top as the leading academic distraction.
"You can waste a lot of time struggling to maintain Facebook posts ... instead of engaging in your schoolwork or true conversation," Mr. Ross said. He and a few friends, mostly juniors and seniors, concocted a plan for a campuswide "Facebook fast" for the month of December, leading up to exam week.
"One way to realize how unconsciously dependent you are is to do experiments," Mr. Ross explained.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Oh no - what if they relapse into tv watching??
what do these idiots think their going to accomplish? I swear whenever I see one of these boycotts of tv, gaming, electrity, restraunts I wonder who they think cares? Seriously if you want to stop using somthing stop using it. No one cares what you do or for that matter why you do it.
The internet is a tool for making peoples lives easier, boycotting it and gonig back to handwritten letters and the like puts you at a disadvantage in comparison to the general population like cutting out an eye or deafening one ear to show you can get by with just one of each rather than two.
If want to hear preaching I’ll go to my mothers ultra leftist protestant hellhole of a church and sleep there.
All I know is I am NOT going to do a Free Republic fast
what’s facebook?
The technology is fine within limits and it sounds like these folks know where their limits are.
I went to grad shool and TA’d a class with a bunch of undergrad girls. They were on FaceBook whenever they had the chance. I read one girl’s profile over her shoulder. It said something like “I’m in the honors program, but I’m such a lush. Here are some photos of me when I was really drunk.”
Morons advertising their stupidity.
I and others have tried to “Google” me. Only some campaign contributions show up. And you’d have to know what to look for.
My niece’s facebook page has photos that I would not put up. I’ve told my son that he cannot be friends with her.
I’m very conscious of what I write on facebook (or on free republic). I make sure it is G rated.
At least free republic is somewhat anonymous, but facebook isn’t.
My son just graduated from GCC. I wonder if he knows these guys...I just sent him an e-mail. :-)
I’m not exactly G-rated, but FreeRepublic is a bit more anonymous. I’m sure the federal government will get the user information somehow someday, but I’m on a number of other lists that will make up the Obamessiah’s Brownshirts’ target lists when they get around to “relocating-to-the-countryside” people like me.
‘07 Alum here. I have many fond memories from GCC. I don’t doubt these guys have completely honest intentions with this.
I didn’t know any of these guys but I knew the photographer and the author.
One of the upsides for SMART college grads: a lot of their employers look for the Myspace and Facebook of the person they’re hiring, and the person who doesn’t appear to waste all of his time on there (or put up photos of himself drinking while underage) is probably more likely to get hired.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.