Class Divisions

“Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” by danah boyd

                According to boyd, “MySpace and Facebook are new representations of the class divide in American youth”.  Although her ideas are interesting, I think that is a bold statement and this is the first article that I really do not agree with. I was Sociology major, and the topics of MySpace and Facebook as socioeconomic classes were not around when I studied. SNS are changing all kinds of areas of study that is for sure!

Personally, I preferred MySpace better because I could put up a pretty green floral background and add the more personal touches!?!! I would not really consider that the “bling” that boyd mentions in her article. I’m a 31 year old white woman and I left MySpace and now exclusively have an active Facebook page. The reason?  Because everyone else was doing it. Slowly all my friends were leaving MySpace and so I followed. I don’t know why they left MySpace. I know of many people that left just because less of their friends were on the site. This is a social site and for whatever reason, it happened. When Facebook went public, I did not want to join, because I did not want to be associated with college kids, much like they did not want high school students on the site.

In saying that, I am not American youth and I cannot begin to know what they are thinking!

                Again, this article is a couple of years old and a lot has happened in that time in terms of social networking.  I’m not sure but I think that just as many teens have heard of Facebook today as they have of MySpace. On a daily basis, students come in after school to use the computers at the library to log onto their Facebook accounts. They may be of a lower socioeconomic class and do not have internet access outside of school, but they are certainly on Facebook!