Facebook for "goodie two shoes", MySpace for "burnouts"

Academic's "observations" on social networking

26 June 2007 11:31 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

A 6-month study of American teenage users of MySpace and Facebook by Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley has suggested that which site teens choose is down to their socio-economic class.

The conclusions drawn so far are from a preliminary draft of the study's results, and Boyd makes it clear that "this is not an academic article" merely observations.

Boyd suggests that teens using the Harvard-founded Facebook come from more prosperous homes and are more likely to go to college, in her words: "goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook".

Boyd further explains the Facebook profile: "They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities".

In contrast, according to Boyd, MySpace teens are "'burnouts', 'alternative kids', 'art fags', punks, emos, goths, gangstas".

Boyd goes on to state that these alt kids' parents probably didn't go to college, and they are expected to get a job when they finish high school rather than go on to higher education themselves.

"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks (or) freaks."

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