Facebook and Myspace highlight teen class division?

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 27 June 2007 12:27

Opinion and Analysis

If you happen to be an American child of the ruling class then chances are you have or are aspiring to have a Facebook account; if you're a working class child then Myspace is probably your online social network of choice. At least that's what PhD candidate Danah Boyd contends in an essay on her website.

Ms Boyd, a post graduate student at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, claims "Myspace and Facebook are new representations of the class divide in American youth." To explain her contention, Ms Boyd uses a rather self indulgent piece of writing, packed with value judgements and liberally sprinkled with political bias plus occasional false modesty about her command of language (which is really very good).

The way Ms Boyd sees it, kids from the educated, ruling class (hegemonic teens) are either moving from Myspace to Facebook or joining Facebook exclusively because it is the key to building social networks - meeting the right people so to speak - in college. On the other hand, kids from the subservient classes  (subaltern teens) go to Myspace, because that's where they'll fit in and partially because many of them have never heard of Facebook anyway.

In an outrageous fit of stereotyping, Ms Boyd engages in a simplistic attempt to profile the membership of the two social networking sites and in the process makes unfounded sweeping statements, managing to offend just about every societal group she mentions:

"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 part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. 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. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on Myspace. Myspace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers."