A new study by a UC Berkeley PhD student shows that certain "classes" of teenagers prefer either MySpace or Facebook. Based on interviews with teens who use the sites Danah Boyd's study shows that while Facebook users are often the Prom-Queen-headed-to-a-good-college types (oh, and they tend to be white), MySpace users are more often outcasts who started work after graduating high school.
"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," Boyd wrote.
Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".
"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers," she says.
Interesting. I guess now I know where I should spend most of my social networking time (if the study is accurate and bearing in mind that I'm not a teenager). But I'm curious, does your choice of site and personal history match up with Boyd's findings?
[Via BBC]
