Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace
danah boyd
June 24, 2007
Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.
(I want to take a moment to make a meta point here. I have been traipsing through the country talking to teens and I've been seeing this transition for the past 6-9 months but I'm having a hard time putting into words. Americans aren't so good at talking about class. It's sticky, it's uncomfortable, and to top it off, we don't have the language for marking class in a meaningful way. So this piece is intentionally descriptive, but in being so, it's also hugely problematic. I wish I could just put numbers in front of it all and be done with it, but instead, I'm going to face the stickiness and see if a point can be made through it all. Hopefully it works. If not, sorry.)
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I know what these sites are, in theory
But, it just seems like ' too much information' to be giving out over the internet. Some of these children have never heard of the word privacy.
I read the article last night, and thought it was very interesting.