Microsoft Research and Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society | danah@danah.org
Many of us have had our lives transformed by technology. And many of us are also enamored of the transformative potential of technology, which has led us to develop technology and become advocates of technological practices. As we become more enveloped in and by technology, it’s easy to feel excited about what’s going on. Yet we must also be cautious.
The rhetoric around technology often makes it out to be the great equalizer of society, suggesting that technology can in and of itself make the world a better place. Let’s ignore the technological determinist overtones for a moment and note that this rhetoric fails to capture the complex ways in which the actual adoption of technology tends to mirror and magnify a whole suite of societal issues.
It is crucial that we begin accounting for how technology actually reveals social stratification and reproduces social divisions. For decades we’ve assumed that inequality in relation to technology has everything to do with access and that if we fix the access problem, all will be fine. This is the grand narrative of politicized concepts like the digital divide. Yet, increasingly, we’re seeing people with similar levels
of access engage with technology in very different ways. And we’re experiencing a social media landscape in which participation “choice” leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions, which already pervade society.
Rather than staying in the land of the abstract, let’s go concrete with a specific case study: the differential adoption of MySpace and Facebook among American teens.
I have been doing ethnographic fieldwork on various aspects of social network sites since 2003. Starting in 2005, I began specifically focusing on the social media practices of American high school-age teenagers. During the 2006-2007 school year, I started noticing a trend. In each school, in each part of the country, there were teens who opted for MySpace and teens who opted for Facebook. There were also plenty of teens who used both. At the beginning of the school year, teens were asking “Are you on MySpace? Yes or No?” At the end of the school year, the question had changed to “MySpace or Facebook?”
In analyzing my data, one can reasonably see this as a matter of individual choice in a competitive market. There are plenty of teenagers who will tell you that they
are on one or the other as a matter of personal preference having to do with features, functionality, design, and usability. For example, Justin ( 15, Austin) prefers Facebook because of the unlimited pictures while Anindita ( 17, Los Angeles) likes that MySpace is “more complex” while “Facebook is just plain white and that’s it.”
Teens will also talk about their perceptions of different sites, about what they think certain affordances mean, or how they perceive the sites in relation to values they hold, such as safety. For example, Cachi ( 18, Iowa) likes that “Facebook is less competitive than MySpace” while Tara ( 16, Michigan) thinks that Facebook seems safer.
For all of the technology-spe-cific commentary teens offer, the dominant explanation teens will give to justify their choice has to do with their friends. Simply put, they go where their friends are:
Kevin ( 15, Seattle): I’m not big on Facebook; I’m a MySpace guy. I have a Facebook and I have some friends on it, but most of my friends don’t check it that often so I don’t check it that often.
Red ( 17, Iowa): I am on Facebook and MySpace. I don’t talk to people on MySpace anymore… The only reason I still have my MySpace is because my brother’s on there.
November + December 2009
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