Summary:
In Donah Boyd’s, “Myspace or Facebook?” she argues that social media sites create social division among different groups of people, we should acknowledge this because it might help us understand teenagers more according to their preferences of social media.
In the article it states that most teenagers think down upon on others that use Myspace instead of facebook. Other facebook users call them “ghetto” and use words signaling that people that use Myspace are from a lower socio-economic background. Also facebook users have racist beliefs about Myspace users.
On the other hand Facebook users seem to be classified as “smarter and better” than Myspace users. Teens think that it’s usually the smarter kids that go onto facebook and leaving
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According to the article when 14 year old Kat is asked to describe the difference between Myspace and Facebook users it says, “Kat chooses words that signal that those on Myspace are from a lower socio-economic background and, most probably black.” (412) Thoughts and words like Kat’s are shared among other teenegars who are activley on social media. Another comment made was by 17 year old Craig. He said, “The lower class usually were content to stick to myspace. Any high school student who has a Facebook will tell you that Myspace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious.” It seems as if the majority of people think badly of those who use Myspace. So according to the teens after a while it was just the “ghetto” kids that decided to stay on Myspace and everyone left. The reason behind this is maybe because of the websites reputation. By choosing one or the other teens might have felt as if they were making a big decision that would help others identify them as pertaining to a particular group. Teens were more likely to go to the website that had similar people on them. This is what Boyd refers to as “homophily” which means that people that are alike tend to stick …show more content…
For example in education people use social media to communicate with colleagues and other people who are probably not always going to be similar to them. Plus social media is a great place to meet people who are different. By a simply clicking one button whether it’s “add friend” or “follow” you are now connected to that person. It makes communication way easier especially since it’s fast and simple to use. Infact, according to an article on reuters.com a study shows that Facebook makes poeple more social. S. Graig Watkins, a professor at the University of Texas conducted a study with 900 people. He found out that “More than 60 percent of Facebook users said posting status updates was among the most popular activities, followed by 60 percent who wrote comments on their profile and 49 percent who posted messages and comments to
The article ‘Web of Risks’ by Brad Stone, is about how young adults misuse social media and there are consequences. Cameron Walker, a sophomore at Fisher College had organized a petition dedicated to getting a campus security guard fired and put it on Facebook. Marc Zuckerberg designed Facebook in 2003 and it is a well-known website used worldwide. On the Facebook page Walker wrote that the security guard harassed students and needed to be eliminated. His plan backfired due to his use of wording and it came off threatening so he was expelled. Social media is looked at as a way to express yourself. Different social networks are used such as Facebook, Bebo, and Myspace. On these sites sometimes personal life is published,
James Franco says “Attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking”, I agree with this as all teenagers in today’s society seem to want is attention. This affects them by distancing themselves from who they truly are and what they believe in as they are very focused on trying to give the people only what they like to see. For example, the Snapchat article states, “Teens have this fear that people might be doing something cooler than us, so we feel like we need to make it seem like we are doing something even cooler.” Teenagers go that extra step of doing something that they might not agree with just to feel good about getting other’s attention. This has affected teenagers because they have forgotten of expressing what they believe in or what they
For example, Awesomesauce014 wrote an online article titled on “The Effects Social Networks upon Society,” in the Teen Ink web page. In this article, the author explained that social networks might take over face-to-face interactions, eventually. The author also talks about how social networks promote isolation and bullying. The author talks about how social media promotes isolation because it’s easy to go through a day without having any human interaction because of technology. The author states, “Many people are becoming used to only conversing through their computer.” The author states, “Teenagers, however, use this new technology in a way that could be dangerous.” What the author means by this is that teenagers have different uses for social media as opposed to adults, who post things they feel important to post. Teenagers on the other hand just want to impress other teenagers and are looking to fit in, like the author states, “In this stage of their lives, they care more about their need to impress their peers than mature reasoning.” Cyber bullying has become very common throughout the years because of the rise of technology and how easily accessible social media is. With teenagers trying to decide whom they are and trying to fit in is difficult enough; now add social media and how important it has become for them to get as many likes as they can so they can be
Facebook is a social network that lets you post anything you want, like; statuses, pictures, videos. You can see what your friends are doing just by what they post and they can do the same for you. Twitter is about the same when it comes to sharing posts, pictures, etc. but you have a limit of characters for each tweet you send.. These social networks take over a persons’ life because of how much they are on it; but this is only one of few major problems with that come with these networks. There have been cases when people libel one another, trying to ruin each other’s lives. There are teenagers bullying other teenagers on these networks and we call it cyberbullying. Two other major problems are invasion of a person’s privacy and Facebook tracking your every move.
While it has been explored so far how technological advancement has affected varying social classes, especially when discussing gentrification, once exploring the technology of social media, it becomes clear that there are additional social forces analyzed. Danah Boyd performed a study in 2011 regarding the idea of “white flight” but occurring online, specifically between MySpace and Facebook. As Facebook was breaking the surface of social media in 2007, MySpace was still the more popular social network for teenagers to use and stay connected to one another . However, it didn't take long before more and more teens stopped using MySpace and preferred Facebook as their go-to social media site. It was this change of one’s social media preference that sparked the research question for Boyd’s study: why the sudden change from MySpace to Facebook and which individuals changed their
Danah Boyd mentions in his article there are some people think that most Facebook users are more educated than MySpace. “Craig (17, California): The higher castes of high school moved to Facebook. It was more cultured, and less cheesy. The lower class usually were content to stick to MySpace. Any high school student who has a Facebook will tell you that MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious” (Boyd,413). This shows that there are people identify others based on which social media site they join. The reason that might explain why some people think Facebook users are more educated is because Facebook starts as a social network at Harvard. However, I think today anyone can get access to social media sites. People from different ages, community, socioeconomic situation and education. They might be more gravitated to the most social media site that is popular in their society. For example, in the U.S most people who I met have a Facebook account while in my country there are some people have a Facebook account but the majority of people do not because the most popular social media site is Twitter, so most people have a Twitter account. Also, because Twitter is popular in my country, there are Twitter users from different economic and education levels. For that reason, it is hard to judge people education level in a popular social media
Social media began affecting our communication and relationships as early as 1969 when the first internet service provider became available to universities in America. According to the University of North Carolina, in 2002, Friendster, the first social media website available to the U.S., was created and gained over 3 million members in just over 3 months. One year later, MySpace launched. Facebook was created in 2004 by a 24-year-old Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. UNC confirms it was initially a way for Harvard students to interact; Facebook is currently the world’s largest social network with a billion users connecting though photos, links, and comments on a streaming News Feed. News Feed is a community page that shows the top stories of everyone on your Facebook. Now a billion people of today’s generation can interact with nearly everyone that have ever met. Services such as Facebook allow users to create and maintain relationships with people that they wouldn’t other wise keep in touch with. (Insert example)
These four features – profiles, photos, friends and news feed - differentiate Facebook from other types of computer-mediated communication. Many young people join SNS to maintain connections with their friends. While viewing profiles, they are given links to their friends’ friends and so they can spend hours surfing the network, clicking from ‘Friend’ to ‘Friend’. By looking at others’ profiles, young people often get a sense of what types of presentations are socially appropriate; others’ profiles provide critical cues about what to present on their own profile. (Boyd D., 2008) Many young people also manipulate the profiles to express themselves with the choice of pictures and the answers to questions.
Facebook has turned around completely in the past years due to cyber bullying. Negative comments are made various times on Facebook about how different an individual’s body is from another, social media is a cruel thing due to the fact that everything is opinion based or just plain hatred instead. Facebook has more supervision along with options to block friends that may be causing emotional damage. It has more of a safety aspect rather than Instagram and many other social media sites which are highly beneficial to may users and a good thing about social media. On the other hand media does also play a positive role in today’s society such as, on social media sites tutorial videos are on display a various amount of useful things are displayed, different workouts/motivational quotes, and recipes.
In my personal experiences, social media caused social division due to existing lifestyles, hobbies, and fashion caused by sites being liked by certain social groups in my high school. Boyd in her article quotes a comment made by a student named Craig where his description of the segregation caused by social media “focuses on a comparison of MySpace and Facebook to a series of lifestyle brands” (413). While my high school was not clearly segregated into cliques, friend groups were usually made due to similar hobbies, such as sports, or similar interests such as fashion or comics. It was during high school that the popularity of social media became apparent to me, and honestly before high school and the introduction of social media I can’t remember what I had done online. By then Facebook was considered a site that everyone used, there was no social segregation. However, there was a segregation between people who used Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. When I first started learning about social media I was told that Instagram was used by the “preps”, anyone who was considered “social” and “popular” and usually played sports. Twitter was for “hipsters” whom were people that scorned the “preps” and liked grunge fashion and alternative music. Tumblr, the social media website I initially joined,
The second plight of this generation is the misuse of the social media giant Facebook. This network was made to connect people from across the world to one another, but this generation has made it into something completely different. It has become a bulletin board of hate and jealousy. The website gives many great things, but those great things can become perverted. It provides an anonymity so that bullies can hide behind a computer monitor and ridicule people that in the real world they would never have the gall to try to hurt.
Facebook, is the Social Media platform that has captured this generation. It is Universal. If an account for Facebook is not owned then that individual is defamed. Without Facebook, this individual will be missing out on status updates and pictures from their friends. In the eyes of a millennial this individual would be unsocial. Facebook is popular because of the way it connects users with their friends.
There are things in the great world of Facebook that kids should not be exposed to at a young age, and it also can get quite annoying to older people who are using Facebook the way that it’s intended to be used. Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard undergraduate student, who was into creating websites. He started off with making a website that permitted students to see what classes their friends were in, so that they could see their friends in the class and want to join also. Later he wanted to transform his idea to an even greater website that would transform the world of social networking forever. He made a website that connected Harvard students to each other, in which he called Thefacebook. Thefacebook quickly spread through all colleges that Zuckerberg couldn’t even keep up the spread and had to have others help with adding all the different colleges that wanted to be a part of the social networking website. The sole purpose of Facebook was so that college kids would be able to connect with each other; some would say that it shouldn’t even be for high school teens. Except when I was in high school I found it very useful with connecting with my friends, especially since I went to school 45 minutes from my house. That’s where I draw the line though, there is absolutely no need for anyone that is under 15 years old, which is the age most kids start high school, should not be on Facebook.
Without social media, society would not be able to communicate with people all over the world for various reasons such as business, family, friends, relationships and many more. This is one of the few positive impacts social media has on human communication, which is true. Social media definitely helps many maintain and build relationships. It allows many to speak more freely without being scared to raise their voice. Social media allows people to be more honest, as many would not have the courage to address these situations face to
Most social networking sites don't allow people a lot of privacy; almost all social networking sites that people log into will allow them to change the privacy settings. (1:SV:SV.) “13 million users said they had not set or did not know about Facebook's privacy settings and 28% shared all or nearly all of their posts publicly.” (ProCon.org) What this means is a high number of people on social media have their profile open to everyone and not just their friends. Most social networking sites have no point to them and are just a loss of time. “40% of 8 to 18 year olds spend 54 minutes on social media sites a day.” (ProCon.org...