Facebook had a negative effect on the academic performance of 78 percent of Saudi secondary school students, said a recent survey conducted by Musaed bin Hamdan Al-Sharari, a Saudi student of Jordan’s Yarmouk University. “About 67 percent of Saudi students do not use Facebook for academic purposes,” said the study by Al-Sharari, a postgraduate student of the university’s Faculty of Information. Most Saudi students use Facebook to spend their free time and chat with their friends. “About 57 percent of secondary schools in the Kingdom do not have their pages on the Facebook,” the study pointed out. The survey, which was conducted on 400 students in public and private schools in Riyadh, found that many of them had acquainted with bad friends and used to see ugly photos and videos during the time of exams. “This had a negative effect on their academic results,” Al-Sharari said and emphasized the need for educating children on how to use social media in an effective and useful manner. Meanwhile, the Communications and Information Technology Commission said yesterday that it has approved a number of roaming packages that would be suitable to Saudis studying abroad and their dependents as well as families who spend their vacations in foreign countries. “We hope this will encourage companies to reduce their prices for local calls by offering discounted packages and to invest more to improve the quality of services.” The CITC said it had noticed in the past the flight of millions of cell phone chips to outside the Kingdom and were used to receive international calls free of charge by individuals and businesses. Source: Arab News