Facebook for old Ager?

I was reading somewhere that, In Atlanta, a shy quiet 14-year-old boy that I’ll call Katlay. he wasn’t particularly interested in talking to me, but he answered my questions diligently. he said that he was on both MySpace and Facebook, but quickly started talking about MySpace as the place where he gathered with his friends. At some point, I asked him if his friends also gathered on Facebook and his face took on a combination of puzzlement and horror before he exclaimed, “Facebook is for old people!” Of course, Mr. Kalyan still uses Facebook to communicate with his mother, aunt, cousins in Kentucky, and other family members.

Cross-town, I met up with Connor, a well-spoken 17-year-old who is more than comfortable in sharing his opinions with me. His manner of speaking and attitude means that he would’ve fit into Eckert’s “jock” category even though he plays no sport. In fact, Connor is more interested in gadgetry (Macs to be precise), but that no longer has the same geek ring as it once did. Connor tells me about how Facebook is the new thing that everyone is using and that, while he prefers MySpace, he now primarily logs into Facebook. His girlfriend deleted her MySpace profile and most of his friends now spend their time on Facebook. In fact, he can’t think of anyone at school who still actively uses MySpace. Connor is also aware of the presence of adults on Facebook. He messages with his mother and his youth pastor on Facebook and he waxes elegantly about how he thinks that Facebook is just as popular among adults as it is among teens. He believes that the reason that people switched to Facebook was because it was more “mature.”

Yet, there’s another important factor here. These teens come from very different demographics. Both teenagers are white and live in the deep south, but they are from different socioeconomic backgrounds and their public schools have quite different characters. Kaitlyn’s family income is near the median of Atlanta while Connor comes from a family that is better-off. Both have had many different opportunities afforded to them by loving and deeply involved parents. The biggest differences in their lives stem from their friend groups and the schools that they attend.

Connor was lamenting the presence of filters in his school (coupled with the sign in the computer lab that warned of punishment if anyone was caught on MySpace). I asked him why his school was strict and he responded by telling me that it was because they were the best school and they had standards. I asked him what made it the best school and he first started by saying that it was because they were strict and kept people in line, but then reverted course. He told me that in Atlanta, most schools are 60% or more black but his school was only 30% black. And then he noted that this was changing, almost with a sense of sadness. Katlay, on the other hand, was proud of the fact that his school was very racially diverse. He did complain that it was big, so big in fact that they had created separate “schools” (think: Harry Potter) and that he was in the school that was primarily for honors kids but that this meant that he didn’t see all of his friends all the time. But he valued the different types of people who attended. These differences are reflected in their friend groups – Connor’s friends are almost entirely white and well-off while at least half of Katlay’s friends are black and most of his friends are neither well-off nor poor.

Both Katlay and Connor follow the crowd when it comes to social media and their instincts reflect more than just their own beliefs; they reflect what is normative among their cohort.

So going back to the question of age and maturity – why do these dynamics of race and socioeconomic factors matter? One argument made about the differences between teens from wealthy and poor environments is that wealthy teens are much more likely to integrate with adults than teens from poorer backgrounds. (There are obviously exceptions on all sides.) Now, Connor is not exceedingly wealthy and Katlay is not poor, but I can’t help but wonder how much of what they’re reflecting is part of that more general trend.

Will Katlay begin to embrace adults alongside his peers in a few years? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Might their differences be simply a personality thing? Perhaps, but I saw these dynamics occur across many other pairings of teens with similar differences and similarities.

Regardless of whether or not this factor explains the differences between these teens, I can’t help but wonder the significance of teens’ willingness to interact with known adults on social network sites. There’s nothing worse than demanding that teens accept adults in their peer space, but there’s a lot to be said for teens who embrace adults there, especially non-custodial adults like youth pastors and “cool” teachers. I strongly believe that the healthiest environment we can create online is one where teens and trusted adults interact seamlessly. To the degree that this is not modeled elsewhere in society.

Social technologies succeed when they fit into the social lives and practices of those who engage with the technology.

Friendster launched at a time when the economy was slow and many web-minded 20-somethings were slacking at menial jobs that they didn't care about (particularly in the SF region where people were only coming out of post-bust depression); many web-minded folks were happy to spend hours futzing online. Economic factors have changed and many web-minded have found interesting jobs. This is only a small cause of Friendster's loss of this group, but one that should be acknowledged.
Friendster was a new thing, full of interesting content that motivated people to surf and surf and surf. Surfing motivated people to post more interesting things. Games emerged. Games were squashed by the company. Surfing got super duper slow. Friendster became less novel and more restrictive and, thus, more lame.
MySpace launched at a time when some of the game-minded were still enthusiastic and the enthusiastic surfers wanted to find more kitsch crap. They jumped on MySpace, created all sorts of culture and profiles complete with massive amounts of media, and helped figure out how to hack the system to make the profiles more expressive. MySpace didn't stop them. As a result, the cultural enthusiasm was nurtured and it grew and grew and grew...
MySpace realized that people were promoting events on Friendster. They contacted promoters and got them to engage with the "cool" people on the site by promoting LA-based events. From this, there was the emergence of band profiles, giving musicians an opportunity to create identity and have a place to point fans to. Music is cultural currency. 20-somethings want to know how to get on the list. Young people follow music and celebrities. Other young people follow the young people that follow music. Music played a critical role in increasing its popularity, simply by giving it cultural currency amongst celebrities and by marking MySpace as "cool." (Even teens who don't care about music recognize that music differentiates people and is part of the "cool" narrative.)
Both Friendster and MySpace saw a drop in ages. Friendster squelched this fast because they saw themselves as a dating site. MySpace supported it with different features and a drop in age limit as they realized there was more to sites like this than dating.
Youth and alienated populations are inclined to spend more time going through identity development processes because they are trying to "figure out who they are." Blogs and profiles are particularly supportive of this. Of course, blogs require having something to say while profiles let you write yourself into being via collage. People do grow out of ongoing identity production, but not for quite some time. (Hell, i still haven't.) Friendster tried to stop this, wanting people to be serious and fit into pre-defined checkboxes - to know who they are. MySpace let these groups run wild and these are the two populations who dominate MySpace - youth (14-24) and 20/30-somethings who participate actively in cultural development (from performance artists to clubgoers to sex divas to wannabee celebrities). These sites are ideal for these populations, even if they make no sense to parents and professionals.
For many teens, MySpace is the first asynchronous messaging system that they use regularly. Sure, they have emails but those are to communicate with parents/teachers/companies, not with friends. People check in daily to see what messages they get. This was starting to happen on Friendster, but server slowness killed this practice. This will make it quite tricky for teens to fully leave MySpace while their friends are still using it.
Identity development requires taking ownership of your presentation of self and really being able to personalize it, morph it to be "you" (even if you is copied from a site that tells you how to be you). Templates are not personalization.MySpace allowed users to really make the site their own, asking one favor: don't overwrite the advertising. Out of respect, most users complied. Think about that: Out. Of. Respect.
Basically, MySpace evolved with its users, building a trusting relationship, figuring out how to meet their needs and cultural desires, providing them with features and really trying to give them what they were looking for. Friendster did not - it fought its users hand and foot, telling them how to behave.

When Friendster launched, it was quickly inhabited by populations who had good reasons to connect with each other. By and large, the early adopters were living in a region different from their hometown (or living in their hometown post-college and cranky about it). Finding "lost" friends was a fun game - people wanted to connect. Of course, connecting is not enough and it was bound not to last, but it was fun.
Connecting is also the initial activity of newcomers on MySpace, but they move beyond that quickly. Of course, it never completely goes away, especially since MySpace acknowledges that not all "friends" are friends and no one bats an eye if someone collects hundreds of people. It's more like a process of namaste - i acknowledge your soul and you acknowledge mine. MySpace did not try to force people's connecting practices into pre-existing ideas of whatshould be. They let the practice evolve as users saw fit, without criticism, without restriction. As it evolved, people did new things with it. They used it to flirt, to advertise bands and activities, to offer cultural kudos.
Friendster's early adopters were 20-somethings. While many did not come to Friendster to get laid (just as they say they don't go to bars to get laid), places where large numbers of hott singles hang out are bound to attract other singles, regardless of whether or not they want to admit that they're looking for sex. Friendster was a free site where people could meet other interesting people; at the same time, rejection was OK because no one was actually _looking_ to meet someone. Sex is still the reason why people use the site, particularly gay men. This was a big gain for Friendster and, also a gain for MySpace. Given its singular focus, Friendster was much more successful at supporting this than MySpace, making certain that search worked and was meaningful and that relationships meant something. Of course, that also curtailed its growth tremendously.

People use the social technologies that all of their friends are using.

Freaks, geeks and queers all invaded Friendster in the early days and they made certain that all of their friends were there. They did so organically in clusters. This was very successful, until they felt alienated from the site. There is a tipping point to get on and a tipping point to get off. Once mass departure began with a few pissed-off folks, it spiraled quickly. While the early adopters left storm-like, canceling their accounts, most users simply stopped logging in frequently because it was no longer the place where their friends were.
Friendster was beginning to get mainstream American 20/30-somethings when it got bogged down by dreadfully slow servers. Mainstreams would (and did) irritate the early adopters, but not enough to make them leave. Yet, both mainstream-ification and slowness played a role in the departure of early adopters. Mainstream-ification played a greater factor in early adopters' lack of interest in returning once the site was fixed.
The slow servers made it very difficult (if not impossible) for mainstream users to engage. Frustrated, many lost interest before they really engaged. It should be noted that slow connections are more common in foreign countries and so this did not serve as the same kind of barrier elsewhere - growth continued during the slow period in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia. Because of this (and a few other factors), Friendster survived the server disaster in these regions and continued to grow into the mainstream there. And into the youth.
Mainstream American users came on because of mass media, not because of organic cluster effects. When they joined, they couldn't see anything or anyone. It was also not where all of their friends were and often they got bored before their friends arrived; there was never enough of a tipping point for many mainstream clusters.
MySpace stayed out of the media for the first two years. Their growth was completely organic, allowing for significant cluster effects. Additionally, those who heard about it but didn't have many friends there could join and still participate, still see what people were doing. They got a friend - Tom - and could wander around looking at all of the profiles. For cluster influencers, this was critical, and looking around would often motivate them to drag in their friends.
When clusters of friends are all on a social site, watercooler effects emerge. The limited amount of things people could share made this difficult on Friendster; people mostly shared profiles as cultural currency and testimonials did allow for some marking of turf and social hierarchy. Yet, on MySpace, there are a bazillion things to find deep in the nooks, allowing lots and lots to be shared. Allowing media in comments and the ability to share video/pictures via profiles enhanced this.
Testimonials on Friendster took the form of singular acknowledgments of others' existence. Fakesters started turning it into a communication space, but that practice died with the Fakesters; very few users took that on. The comments section on MySpace took the form of a performative guestbook. Whenever someone thinks of someone else, whenever they stop by, they leave a comment... They let both the owner and the owners' visitors take note of their presence. They're writing presence into being in addition to writing themselves into being. This is a very important turn and it really solidifies people's engagement in the site.

It's not all about productivity.

People often say that social networking sites will succeed when people have something to do. They point to sites like LinkedIn where business people can social network and actually get "value" out of the site. There is no doubt that LinkedIn is great for brownnosers, but there are a lot of folks out there who don't care about "getting ahead" by hegemonic standards.
Suggesting that formalized action and tangible benefits are the only path to success is hogwash. These are simply ideals that contemporary America holds onto in a capitalist society where people are only valued based on their productivity. It is reproduced by technologists who are living in a society full of venture capitalists and stockbrokers and other people who live by the "do or die" mentality. But the reality is that most people's social lives are not so formal, not so action-oriented. Or, at least not in the sense that technologists speak of.
Even when there's no prescribed activity, people are doing things on these sites. They're hanging out. They're dancing in front of digital mirrors. They're patting their friends on their digital backs. They're increasing the strength of their relationships through sharing. They're consuming and producing cultural artifacts that position them within society. They're laughing, exploring and being entertained.
People were hanging out on Friendster before they hung out on MySpace. But hanging out on Friendster is like hanging out in a super clean police state where you can't chew gum let alone goof around and you're told exactly how to speak to others. Hanging out on MySpace is more like hanging out in a graffiti park with fellow goofballs while your favorite band is playing. That said, there are plenty of folks who don't want to be hanging out in a graffiti park and they are not sticking around on MySpace as a result.

It is not about technological perfection.

Portability of identity doesn't matter. Easy-to-use interfaces don't matter. Visual coherence doesn't matter. Simple navigation doesn't matter. Bugs don't matter. Fancy new technologies don't matter. Simple personalization doesn't matter.
Before you scream "but it does to me!" let me acknowledge that you're right. It does matter to you. The question is whether it matters to the masses. And it doesn't. Especially for teens.
What's at stake here is what is called "subcultural capital" by academics. It is the kind of capital that anyone can get, if you are cool enough to know that it exists and cool enough to participate. It is a counterpart to "cultural capital" which is more like hegemonic capital. That was probably a bit too obscure. Let me give an example. Opera attendance is a form of cultural capital - you are seen as having money and class and even if you think that elongated singing in foreign languages is boring, you attend because that's what cultured people do. You need the expensive clothes, the language, the body postures, the social connects and the manners to belong. Limitations are economic and social. Rave attendance is the opposite. Anyone can get in, in theory... There are certainly hodgepodged clothes, street language and dance moves, but most folks can blend in with just a little effort. Yet, the major limitation is knowing that the rave exists. "Being in the know" is more powerful than money. You can't buy your way into knowledge of a rave.
"Coolness" is about structural barriers, about the lack of universal accessibility or parsability. Structural hurdles mean people put in more effort to participate. It's kinda like the adventure of tracking down the right parking lot to get the bus to go to the rave. The effort matters. Sure, it weeds some people out, but it makes those who participate feel all the more validated. Finding the easter egg, the cool little feature that no one knows about is exciting. Learning all of the nooks and crannies in a complex system is exhilarating. Figuring out how to hack things, having the "inside knowledge" is fabu.
Often, people don't need simplicity - they want to feel proud of themselves for figuring something out; they want to feel the joy of exploration. This is the difference between tasks that people are required to do and social life. Social life isn't about the easy way to do something - it's about making meaning out of practice, about finding your own way.
Bugs make technologies seem alive, particularly if they're acknowledged and fixed. They give texture to the environment and people are impressively patient with it if they feel like the architects are on it. It makes the architects look vulnerable which brings them back down to earth, making them real and fallible, but giving them the opportunity to do good. They let the benevolent dictator really serve the people.
Friendster focused on simple and narrow, giving users very limited options and cracking down on all hacks. For a long time, they took away features rather than adding them. They worked to mainstream-ify, to be equally generic to all users. MySpace added features all the time, making it a game to see what had changed, to find new ways of navigating the site. Hacking the site became a cultural phenomenon with websites being dedicated to hacking techniques (brought to you by fellow cultural participants not O'Reilly). MySpace let users define the culture.

Social technologies need benevolent dictators who love their constituents.

Online communities are more like nation-states than technological tools. There is a master behind the architecture, a master who controls the walls of the system and can wage war on her/his people at any point. People know this. They have to trust that the creators have their best intentions in mind. They invest a lot of time and energy into creating an identity in the system - they want to believe that it is worth it.
Killing off profiles destroys the trust that users have in the leader. Doing so will alienate users and their friends. There are good reasons to alienate some groups - spammers, malicious users, etc. But if you start off treating all of your users as potential criminals, you will not build a healthy environment. Kinda like in real life...
Friendster killed off anyone who didn't conform to their standards, most notably Fakesters and those with more creative non-photorealistic profiles. When MySpace users didn't conform, they were supported and recognized for their contributions to evolving the system. (Exceptions made for pornography, spammers, people using hate speech.) When Friendster was faltering because it was "uncool," Friendster users did not stick up for the site. When MySpace began to falter over the predator crisis, many users got outraged at those attacking the system. They wrote supportive notes to Tom, made YouTube videos, wrote messages on their MySpaces. They didn't want outsiders telling them they couldn't have their space.
People need a figurehead to both love and hate. No figurehead can expect that the users will love her/him all of the time. But lashing out at users makes things much much worse. Figure heads need to operate as rockstars - making public appearances, putting on a good show, keep a happy face even when pissed off.
Jonathan Abrams made it clear that he thought very little of his users. Tom Anderson comes across as loving his users, listening to them, being present with them. Abrams wrote nasty-grams and the language he used when writing to everyone was either obnoxious or so corporate-y formulaic that users could not relate to him. Tom apologizes candidly, writes funny messages to users, welcomes comments on his page, responds to users. Users either love Tom or they think he's lame. But very few actually hate him. Friendster users loathed Abrams.
It should be noted that one of the reasons that Friendster continued to grow abroad is that Abrams did not seem like as big of a dick there. He was much more savvy in addressing the press (or they were nicer to him). He killed off fewer profiles and let it grow amongst youth (probably due to being overwhelmed rather than insight). He had a more hands-off approach. He's less hated there and thus, by default, more trusted.

Moral panic



If the moral panic over MySpace succeeds and causes a change in law (which it is looking like it will), everyone invested in social technologies will lose. In other words, stop celebrating the crisis and get off your asses and engage. This panic is not just a funny side note. It is an industry wide problem concerning speech, property and responsibility. I find it deeply disturbing that we are suggesting that technology companies should be operating in loco parentis.
MySpace is in trouble because of its size and rapid growth. As a result of this, there are so many conflicting practices that people are panicking. Even if your kid has a perfectly PG profile, the idea that s/he can hang with R-rated ones is flipping people out, even when the R-rated ones are perfectly normal in the context in which their created. Collapsed contexts due to size. All of you who want to grow in size better be paying attention, because there are severe complications when you grow. MySpace is facing them right now.
We have faced seen massive communities with collapsed contexts before, but the additional factor of youth has elevated this issue to new levels. And, besides, we've never actually seen such rapid growth in a social technology, nor have we seen such a large coherent social community. Note: Usenet, MOOs and YahooGroups don't count because they were far more segmented structurally, especially pre-search. When they emerged, a much larger proportion of the online population used them, and these technologies did not threaten cultural norms (mostly because hegemonic society wasn't online and didn't recognize the power of digital interaction). Other social technologies did not attract an entire generation while alienating their practices from the previous generation. Finally, while people did expose themselves in other technologies, explicit profile creation of this multi-media form takes it all to a new level.
Back to the fad question... No, it is not just a moral panic that could make MySpace a fad. The primary value right now has to do with identity production and sharing, practices that are more critical to certain populations at certain times in their lives and it is possible that "growing up" will be marked by leaving MySpace (both for the teens and the 20-somethings). It is also possible that getting on MySpace will be marked as "uncool" by the next generation (in the same way that fashion changes across generations). Feeling spammed and invaded by advertisers (or musicians) who seek friendship might turn off users and an increase in this could cripple usage. It is possible that the site will stop evolving with its users. It is possible that people will find new, more interesting ways to do identity production and sharing. It is also possible that the next blinky shiny object will attract users away in clumps, particularly if they better support users' desires in an innovative way. But none of these are right around the corner.
When Friendster users left, they didn't go to the next thing. Yes, many Burners went to Tribe.net and created a really flourishing community there; this community is still alive and doing really well. And some of the gothy humans went to MySpace. But the vast majority of Friendster users simply went back to email and IM, web surfing and the occasional blogging. Friendster didn't meet their needs and the core practices of identity production and social sharing that MySpace offered were not significant enough for this group. A huge part of the success of MySpace is an age and culture thing. Part of being an American teen is figuring out who you are, how you fit into society and culture, how social relations work, etc. Part of this process involves sharing cultural objects, hanging out and trying out different self-performances to find the one that feels "right" (think Goffman "faces"). There are plenty of adults who are doing this as well, but it is central to youth culture. Youth will always do this, using whatever medium is available to them. MySpace is far more deeply situated in the cultural values and practices of its constituents than Friendster ever was. MySpace teens may jump ship, but they are not going to stop doing identity work, at least not for a few years.

The Role of Social Web Sites in Teenager's Life

“If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist” – Skyler, 18, to her mom1

“I'm in the 7th grade. I'm 13. I'm not a cheerleader. I'm not the president of the

student body. Or captain of the debate team. I'm not the prettiest girl in my class.

I'm not the most popular girl in my class. I'm just a kid. I'm a little shy. And it's

really hard in this school to impress people enough to be your friend if you're not any

of those things. But I go on these really great vacations with my parents between

Christmas and New Year's every year. And I take pictures of places we go. And I

write about those places. And I post this on my Xanga. Because I think if kids in

school read what I have to say and how I say it, they'll want to be my friend.” –

Vivien, 13, to Parry Aftab during a “Teen Angels” meeting2

During 2005, online social network sites like MySpace and Facebook became common

destinations for young people in the United States. Throughout the country, young

people were logging in, creating elaborate profiles, publicly articulating their

relationships with other participants, and writing extensive comments back and forth. By

early 2006, many considered participation on the key social network site, MySpace,

essential to being seen as cool at school. While not all teens are members of social

network sites, these sites developed significant cultural resonance amongst American

teens in a short period of time. Although the luster has since faded and teens are not

nearly as infatuated with these sites as they once were, they continue to be an important

part of teen social life.

The rapid adoption of social network sites by teenagers in the United States and in many

other countries around the world raises some important questions. Why do teenagers

flock to these sites? What are they expressing on them? How do these sites fit into their

lives? What are they learning from their participation? Are these online activities like

face-to-face friendships – or are they different, or complementary? The goal of this

chapter is to address these questions, and explore their implications for youth identities.

While particular systems may come and go, how youth engage through social network

sites today provides long-lasting insights into identity formation, status negotiation, and

peer-to-peer sociality. 

To address the aforementioned questions, I begin by documenting key features of social

network sites and the business decisions that lead to mass adoption, and then seek to

situate social network sites in a broader discussion of what I call “networked publics.” I

then examine how teens are modeling identity through social network profiles so that

they can write themselves and their community into being. Building on this, I investigate

how this process of articulated expression supports critical peer-based sociality because,

by allowing youth to hang out amongst their friends and classmates, social network sites

are providing teens with a space to work out identity and status, make sense of cultural

cues, and negotiate public life. I argue that social network sites are a type of networked

public with four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life:

persistence, searchability, exact copyability, and invisible audiences. These properties

fundamentally alter social dynamics, complicating the ways in which people interact. I

conclude by reflecting on the social developments that have prompted youth to seek out

networked publics, and considering the changing role that publics have in young people’s

lives.

Methodology and Demographics

The arguments made in this chapter are based on ethnographic data collected during my

two-year study of United States-based youth engagement with MySpace. 

In employing the term ethnography, I am primarily referencing the practices of “participant

observation” and “deep hanging out”3 alongside qualitative interviews. I have moved

between online and offline spaces, systematically observing, documenting, and talking to

young people about their practices and attitudes.

While the subjects of my interviews and direct observations are primarily urban youth

(ranging in age, sex, race, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and socio-economic class), I have

also spent countless hours analyzing the profiles, blogs, and commentary of teenagers

throughout the United States. Although I have interviewed older people, the vast majority

of people that I have interviewed and observed are of high school age, living with a

parent or guardian. There is no good term to reference this group. Not all are actually

students (and that role signals identity material that is not accurate). Vague terms like

“youth,” “young people,” and “children” imply a much broader age range. For these

reasons, and in reference to the history of the term “teenager” in relation to compulsory

high school education4, I have consciously decided to label the relevant population

“teenagers” even though the majority of individuals that I have spoken with are 14-18.

While strictly speaking, there are non-high school age individuals in this category, the

vast majority of them are; I will focus primarily on that group. 

In examining the practices of teenagers on social network sites, I focus primarily on

MySpace. This will be my primary case study, although my discussion of these sites is

applicable more broadly; I will reference other sites as appropriate. I should note that

prior to studying teen practices on MySpace, I did a two-year ethnographic study of

Friendster, another social network site. While it is unlikely that MySpace will forever be 

the main destination site for teenagers, I use this site because its mass popularity offers

critical insight into participation patterns that do and will exist on other sites.

Although news media give the impression that all online teens in the United States are on

MySpace, this is not the case. For this reason, I want to take a moment to discuss who is

not participating. In 2004, PEW found that 87% of teenagers aged 12-17 have some level

of Internet access.5 In a study conducted in late 2006, they found that 55% of online teens

aged 12-17 have created profiles on social network sites with 64% of teens 15-17.6

While these numbers are most likely low7, it is very clear that not all high school students

participate in online communities that require public content creation like social network

sites.

Qualitatively, I have found that there are two types of non-participants: disenfranchised

teens and conscientious objectors. The former consists of those without Internet access,

those whose parents succeed in banning them from participation, and online teens who

primarily access the Internet through school and other public venues where social

network sites are banned.8 Conscientious objectors include politically minded teens who

wish to protest against Murdoch’s News Corp. (the corporate owner of MySpace),

obedient teens who have respected or agree with their parents’ moral or safety concerns,

marginalized teens who feel that social network sites are for the cool kids, and other teens

who feel as though they are too cool for these sites. The latter two explanations can be

boiled down to one explanation that I heard frequently: “because it’s stupid.” While the 

various conscientious objectors may deny participating, I have found that many of them

actually do have profiles to which they log in occasionally. I have also found numerous

cases where the friends of non-participants create profiles for them.9 Furthermore,

amongst those conscientious objectors who are genuinely non-participants, I have yet to

find one who does not have something to say about the sites, albeit typically something

negative. In essence, MySpace is the civil society of teenage culture: whether one is for

it or against it, everyone knows the site and has an opinion about it.

Interestingly, I have found that race and social class play little role in terms of access

beyond the aforementioned disenfranchised population. Poor urban black teens appear to

be just as likely to join the site as white teens from wealthier backgrounds - although

what they do on there has much to do with their level of Internet access. Those who only

access their accounts in schools use it primarily as an asynchronous communication tool,

while those with continuous nighttime access at home spend more time surfing the

network, modifying their profile, collecting friends, and talking to strangers. When it

comes to social network sites, there appears to be a far greater participatory divide than

an access divide.

Gender appears to influence participation on social network sites. Younger boys are

more likely to participate than younger girls (46% vs. 44%) but older girls are far more

likely to participate than older boys (70% vs. 57%). Older boys are twice as likely to use

the sites to flirt and slightly more likely to use the sites to meet new people than girls of

their age. Older girls are far more likely to use these sites to communicate with friends

they see in person than younger people or boys of their age.10 While gender differences 

do exist and should not be ignored, most of what I discuss in this article concerns

practices that are common to both boys and girls.

Fundamentally, this chapter is a case study based on ethnographic data. My primary goal

is simply to unveil some of the common ways in which teenagers now experience social

life online.

(MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital

Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.)

MySpace and Facebook: How Racist Language Frames Social Media (and Why You Should Care)

Every time I dare to talk about race or class and MySpace & Facebook in the same breath, a public explosion happens. This is the current state of things.  Unfortunately, most folks who enter the fray prefer to reject the notion that race/class shape social media or that social media reflects bigoted attitudes than seriously address what’s at stake.  Yet, look around. Twitter is flush with racist language in response to the active participation of blacks on the site. Comments on YouTube expose deep-seated bigotry in uncountable ways. The n-word is everyday vernacular in MMORPGs. In short, racism and classism permeates every genre of social media out there, reflecting the everyday attitudes of people that go well beyond social media. So why can’t we talk about it?

Let me back up and explain the context for this piece … three years ago, I wrote a controversial blog post highlighting the cultural division taking shape.  Since then, I’ve worked diligently to try to make sense of what I first observed and ground it in empirical data.  In 2009, I built on my analysis in  “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”, a talk I gave at the Personal Democracy Forum.  Slowly, I worked to write an academic article called “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” (to be published in a book called Digital Race Anthology, edited by Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White).  I published a draft of this article on my website in December.  Then, on July 14, Christoper Mims posted a guest blog post at Technology Review entitled “Did Whites Flee the ‘Digital Ghetto’ of MySpace?” using my article as his hook.  I’m not sure why Mims wrote this piece now or why he didn’t contact me, but so it goes.

Mims’ blog post prompted a new wave of discussion about whether or not there’s a race-based (or class-based) division between MySpace and Facebook today. My article does not address this topic. My article is a discussion of a phenomenon that happened from 2006-2007 using data collected during that period. The point of my article is not to discuss whether or not there was a division — quantitative data shows this better. My goal was to analyze American teenagers’ language when talking about Facebook and MySpace. The argument that I make is that the language used by teens has racialized overtones that harken back to the language used around “white flight.” In other words, what American teens are reflecting in their discussion of MySpace and Facebook shows just how deeply racial narratives are embedded in everyday life.

So, can we please dial the needle forward? Regardless of whether or not there’s still a race and class-based division in the U.S. between MySpace and Facebook, the language that people use to describe MySpace is still deeply racist and classist. Hell, we see that in the comments of every blog post that describes my analysis. And I’m sure we’ll get some here, since online forums somehow invite people to unapologetically make racist comments that they would never say aloud. And as much as those make me shudder, they’re also a reminder that the civil rights movement has a long way to go.

Race and class shape contemporary life in fundamental ways. People of color and the working poor live the experiences of racism and classism, but how this plays out is often not nearly as overt as it was in the 1960s. But that doesn’t mean that it has gone away.

There is still bigotry, and the divisions run deep in the U.S. We often talk about the Internet as the great equalizer, the space where we can be free of all of the weights of inequality. And yet, what we find online is often a reproduction of all of the issues present in everyday life. The Internet does not magically heal old wounds or repair broken bonds between people. More often, it shows just how deep those wounds go and how structurally broken many relationships are.

In this way, the Internet is often a mirror of the ugliest sides of our society, the aspects of our society that we so badly need to address. What the Internet does — for better or worse — is make visible aspects of society that have been delicately swept under the rug and ignored. We could keep on sweeping, or we could take the moment to rise up and develop new strategies for addressing the core issues that we’re seeing. Bigotry doesn’t go away by eliminating only what’s visible. It is eradicated by getting at the core underlying issues. What we’re seeing online allows us to see how much work there’s left to do.

In writing “White Flight in Networked Publics?”, I wanted to expose one aspect of how race and class shape how people see social media. My goal in doing so was to push back at the utopian rhetorics that frame the Internet as a kumbaya movement so that we can focus on addressing the major social issues that exist everywhere and are exposed in new ways via social media. When it comes to eradicating bigotry, I can’t say that I have the answers. But I know that we need to start a conversation. And my hope — from the moment that I first highlighted the divisions taking place in 2007 — is that we can use social media as both a lens into and a platform for discussing cultural inequality.

So how do we get started?