The impact of Facebook on university students and on their academic activities can either be good or bad. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the positive and negative impact of Facebook on university students. Though Facebook is helpful in several ways, a closer look at the real impact of Facebook reveals that it affects university students’ academic performance. With the help of a survey conducted among more than 250 students of different universities in Sri Lanka, this papers takes a close look at how Facebook impacts university students’ academic performance.

Internet has become an inseparable part of human life as it involves a variety of routine activities. Social media has revolutionized corporate communication, rapidly changing the way public relations campaigns or programs are distributed and measured (Matthews, 2010). Social networking has made the world communication-rich. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are the most popular social networking sites used for electronic communication. In the last five years, the rapid growth of social media has been observed to be indicative of its importance and its integration into the daily lives of many people in Sri Lanka (Thuseethan and Vasanthapriyan, 2014).

Facebook is the leader of the social media race with more active users worldwide. It is one of the most frequently accessed websites at the moment. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who are alumni of Harvard. Academic success is the supreme goal of any student. University students are one of the major groups using Facebook for fun, with their main purpose being to connect with their friends and share information, photos and status updates.

Information Technology Journal, Facebook, Academic performance, University students, Sri Lankan university, academic performance, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace.