As many news outlets are reporting today, Ohio State University released a study, of 219 university students, suggests that the more you use Facebook the worse your grades get.

The rationale behind this is that students who spend more time on Facebook study less.

According to the study, 65% of students checked Facebook once a day, and they spent at least an hour a day on the site.

Now, every generation has time wasting activities. As a person who graduated college before the invention of Facebook, MySpace, and even Friendster, (those were heady days indeed) mine was probably good old fashioned cable television.

However, it raises an interesting point of discussion for those involved in the nascent world of social media marketing. Brands are ubiquitously talking about the need to “engage social media” and marketers are testing how to best measure ROI in social media channels.

But this study raises the question: is Facebook (and other social networking sites by association) merely a time-waster for people?  Will marketers regret the time and money they spend trying to engage consumers on social networking sites, or will it prove to be a valuable, necessary channel?