Myspace vs. Facebook: White Flight?

Danah Boyd, a social media researcher, presents an interesting and possibly controversial subject in the excerpt White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with Myspace and Facebook. This excerpt explores the ethnic, racial, and class-based implications on social media network choice.

This text is personally relevant to me, as I was initiated into social networking via Myspace, and made the switch over to Facebook. When I was in middle school, the majority of my peers had Myspace account. Despite my parents requests, I made an account and became active on the sight. In October of 2005, I made the switch to Facebook as I was invited via email by one of my peers. I was told it was exclusive, that only college students were on the site until now. This exclusivity intrigued me, and I longed for an invitation. Boyd says that Facebook didn’t open up to high school students until September of 2005, thus making my classmates and I very early users. I come from a wealthy and educated town, and this is also implied in Boyd’s text about the majority of Facebook users.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Although my classmates had all been on Myspace as well, once Facebook became available, it became passé to be a Myspace user. This goes along with Boyd’s idea that teens choose to go where their friends go. Why would someone be apart of a social media network where they can’t interact with their friends? The teenage years were already a struggle before the dawn of social media. Now there are so many more ways an individual can feel rejected and lonely.

Though I do believe there are obvious racial and ethnic differences when it comes to network preference, I think a more important predictor is education and class. I consider my network of friends to be diverse when it comes to race and ethnicity, but we are all of similar social class and education level, and are all coincidentally Facebook users.

I think this is an important topic to discuss, as there are definite societal barriers put in place on individuals when they are logging in to social network sites, but we should think about the future of social networking as a whole- Will facebook still dominate in ten years? What about the millions of users on Twitter? We cannot account for new sites emerging and how tastes may change in the future.