A new study from Ohio State University linked Facebook activity level to a lower grade point average.
Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. The authors of the study stated that this is only observation, and they do not yet have evidence of a causal relationship.
So what about employees that use Facebook on the job? Would the same correlations of poor performance and Facebook use hold true in say, a government office?
There remains a crucial difference between cubicle workers and students using Facebook, which is that students are paying schools for their classes, and companies are paying workers. Could it be a problem that as Web 2.0 pervades Washington, taxpayer dollars will be paying for the social networking addictions of federal workers?
As Facebook becomes ever more culturally ingrained, the question becomes not whether people use it, but when, why and how much. The biggest limitation in the Ohio State study is that it does not address these questions: so many college students use Facebook now that to target those who do not have an account is to target a very special, minority group, which is not an appropriate representation of the "average" student. Similarly, judging government use of social networking tools should rely not on whether or not they're used, but how.
Since government Web 2.0 exists in its own sphere -- the exception perhaps being Twitter -- it also plays by its own rules. Having social networking sites built within certain agencies, like the State Department's ExchangesConnect, forces those sites to be productive. Likewise, federal IT employees have found using Govloop, which uses the same Ning-based social networking platform, extremely productive for exchanging workplace best practices.
Where a college student or an office worker may use Facebook to make plans for the night, discuss fantasy baseball, or laughingly comment on pictures from last Saturday night, government users are pushed into discussing or broadcasting information pertaining to their field of work. In this way, as long as Web 2.0 keeps being developed in Washington, the distraction of using the Internet for one's private social life should keep being mitigated by the option of using the Internet for more productive discussion.
Concerning Twitter, which has resulted in an eerie resemblance between students who fire up Facebook amid a particularly droning lecture and Republicans tweeting as they are forced to listen to Obama's State of the Union speech, the predicament is contingent on how important it is for transparency. Yet many public personas and agencies alike have found success using the technology to spread their news to constituents and concerned citizens.
Irrespective of whether or not you know what a Tweet is, social networking is here to stay. And its effect on government performance depends on how aggressively Washington can make it productive-regardless of how appealing the idea of congressmen trading drunk pictures may be.
More Gov 2.0 Stories:
Get our Newsletter!
Click here to sign up and stay informed