Brain Assassin

What do we have here? A war of some sort? Not quite likely but accord­ing to Danah Boyd there is a rift. Amer­i­can teenagers are flock­ing to MySpace and Face­book and accord­ing to her essay, which go where have some­thing to do with socio-​​economic class. Danah has been try­ing to fig­ure out how to put this divi­sion into some kinda for­mula. Since she hasn’t suc­ceeded yet we can enjoy her obser­va­tions over at her blog. I have to admit, there’s a cer­tain truth to be found in this paper.

In short, Miss Boyd has observed that hege­monic Amer­i­can teens are all on or switch­ing to Face­book. Non-​​hegemonic teens are drawn to MySpace. She thinks that a class divi­sion has emerged which is under­lined by adver­tis­ing or pol­icy deci­sions, for exam­ple. Well, con­sid­er­ing the ori­gin of each site, I find myself agree­ing to her line of thought. But I have to ask myself why any­body should even bother? It’s all just a mat­ter of pre­sen­ta­tion and news. Both social net­work­ing sites embrace dif­fer­ent poli­cies, encour­age dif­fer­ent actions. Is it really safe to assume that MS and FB are the prime indi­ca­tors of class division?