This article, written by Danah Boyd, talks about the socio-economic class division that can be seen in people who join MySpace verses people who are members of the Facebook. Boyd believes that Facebook kids tend to be the goodie two shoes, athletes, etc. who come from families who put priorities on education and were raised in suburbs where everyone was similar to their neighbors. She also claims that they are in "honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities." On the other hand, she talks about how typical kids on MySpace are the alternative kids who like to be different. They might be goths, homosexuals, artsy kids, and/or in various minority groups. She talks about how these kids are less likely to be expected to go to college and get a high paying job. As this article is quite outlandish (and a complete stereotype) I was interested to see what my other classmates thought about this article and Boyd's opinions. Do we agree or disagree with her claim that MySpace is for the 'other' kids who are 'different' and that Facebook is for the 'goodie-goodie?'
2 comments:
I think this stereotyping of MySpace members versus Facebook members is absurd. I can see where her assumptions derive from because Facebook used to be only for college or high school students before it recently expanded to anyone, whereas MySpace has always accepted any type of member as long as he or she was at least 14 (I believe...). However, there are plenty of Facebook members who would fit Boyd's description of a "different" kid and there are plenty of MySpace members who would fit Boyd's description of a "goodie-goodie."
That's a really typical thing for an adult to say. I would say that on myspace, people have more choices to change the template, looks and the background music of the page. Where as Facebook, everyone has the same page layout with differences in the applications. This keeps a cleaner look on Facebook in general. I think it's just the appearance and the perception. I would agree with the idea if they were to mention the fact that Facebook started from a network of elite college students.
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