Reader Joe sent me a link to a fascinating story on NPR’s Website — Facebook skews towards white people; MySpace skews towards non-white people:
“I have friends who are white,” says 19-year-old Diego Luna. “They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”
The class laughs nervously at his description, and then they agree. Benito Rodriguez, 16, adds, “Not to be racist or anything, but there’s more white kids on Facebook.”
Furthermore, Facebook skews towards more affluent people. MySpace, on the other hand, attracts more artists and lots more musicians.
Anybody want to guess how many Unitarian Universalist churches have MySpace pages?
Between zero and ten, perhaps? This brings up some ugly truths…
But to be fair, event coordination is FAR better on FB. At least as far as I can tell.
Hmmm, I have a MySpace page, as do a bunch of my (UU and not) friends. But as MySpace got more and more band pages, I got the feeling that it was more about artist promotion. When Facebook got widespread (and fixed their screwed-up privacy policies), it seemed like the non-musical people all jumped to FB.
I’m not seeing the skin-color divide, as there are some of all kinds in my friends list on both sites. But that’s not a scientific survey, is it? What’s the proportion of pink people and brown people on each site, in relation to their respective proportions in the general population?
Really? Is this a knee jerk liberal NPR story? Or are there really facts behind this? Oh, sorry. Yes. I will go look at the story.
okay, I read the story. Quite frankly, it seems like a lot of speculation and hearsay. Fooey. I’m so tired of *that* masquerading as real news. Give me numbers, facts, not off the cuff interviews with a hand ful of folks here and there, half of them mercurial teenagers. This white/nonwhite divide is not established in this story as a fact, for heavens sake. It’s just some journalist’s rather lame notion puffed up into a story that apparently too many people are taking at face value. Facebook value, perhaps.
For a good paper on this subject, see “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace,” Apophenia Blog Essay, http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html by Danah Boyd (2007).
One interesting quote: “A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook.”
This is so backwards. MySpace is old news. Black kids are supposed to be on the cutting edge of cool, with white culture adopting black slang, music, etc. just as it’s getting passe among the folks it started with. (And thus pushing it right over the cliff into Hopelessly Square.)
I’m on Facebook because my teens are on facebook. they don’t call, they don’t write, they facebook. We’d never hear from the college student if there wasn’t facebook. Yet, there he is, in his suit and tie!
I suspect that MySpace-Facebook demographic differences (among non-musicians) may be more class-based than race/color/ethnicity-based. When I look at the Facebook friends of my youngest nieces (they’re Asian), I see a great variety of races, color, and ethnicities, but people of European descent are the most common. This is not surprising given the upper-middle class neighborhood they live in and schools they attend.
In a 2007 paper, danah boyd reported that “the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because the division in the military reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook.”
From a distance, this report has danah “look at me with uncapitalized names” boyd’s fingerprints all over it. I’m completely unconvinced.
Or from another POV, MySpace is hard as hell to customize in any attractive way.
This story has been recycled over and over again the past few years. The segregation between to the two networking sites reflects the segregation in the culture. Which means it’s not new, it just is… As for UU churches and their pages, that’s an interesting question. Does the page exist to attract new parishioners or connect current ones? My church (All Souls DC) has a facebook page, but I doubt they have a MySpace page because I don’t think many of our members are on MySpace. Is that significant? Should the church use a social networking page to do outreach for new members? How do you do that?
I was just looking at stuff on Facebook today: My stepson had posted pictures of himself with several different young ladies. There were blonds, Asians, Hispanics, Middle Eastern ladies, mixed race, and some I couldn’t tell what they looked like.
They’re all kids who go to college though.
Interesting comments, everyone. Thanks for the thoughtful comments and observations!
dindc @ 10 — Your comment is the one that really made me think. You asked: “As for UU churches and their pages, that’s an interesting question. Does the page exist to attract new parishioners or connect current ones? My church (All Souls DC) has a facebook page, but I doubt they have a MySpace page because I don’t think many of our members are on MySpace. Is that significant? Should the church use a social networking page to do outreach for new members? How do you do that?
I wonder if any of the other commenters have answers for your questions….