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June 25, 2007, 04:17 PM ET
Social Networking and a New Digital Divide?
By the time they get to college, many students already have pledged allegiance to one of the two social-networking giants — Facebook and MySpace. (Plenty of young men and women have profiles on both sites, but even most of those students check one site more than the other.)
How do students choose between the two social networks? The sites’ designs and privacy settings might play a role, but Danah Boyd of Apophenia argues that the real divisions between young users of Facebook and MySpace seem to be coming along social and class lines. Ms. Boyd says it’s now possible to create rough stereotypes of what typical Facebook and MySpace users are thought to look like:
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college…. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after-school activities.
MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools.
Obviously there are plenty of students who don’t neatly fit into one of these two categories. But Ms. Boyd’s argument is an interesting one: Have any campus administrators noticed a social-networking class divide? —Brock Read
Categories: Student-Life, Research
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