Social separation very real in the online realm

“Many of us believe that technologies can be these great equalizers”. This statement by Danah Boyd at the Personal Democracy Forum 2009 holds true. Many of us do believe that technology can be an equalizer but it seems that this believe may not be true for popular social networks such as Myspace and Facebook.

According to Ms. Boyd Myspace can be called the “ghetto of the digital landscape” while Facebook is frequented by the “white, educated and privileged”. Besides the fact that there are very different demographics on these two social networks it has also been found that the divide between these user groups is very hard to overcome. Ms. Boyd goes so far as to state that: “There’s a cultural wall between users” and “If there’s no way for people to communicate across the divide, you can never expect them to do so.” This shortened result is based on a four year dissertation study called “Taken Out of Context - American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics” and is summarized in her paper for the PDF “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”.

Another, less controversial but also important, finding by iStrategy is that Facebook is much more attractive to older users. Users ranging 35-54 years of age are now the largest user group on the network and the growth in the group of over 55 year in the last six month has been 500%. Myspace on the other hand attracts a much younger audience.

In summary there clearly seems to be a demographic and social divide between the two major networks. It does seem likely that this kind of separation can also be found when other social media sites are compared to each other (Twitter also seems to attract slightly older users). The question is whether this kind of online grouping can have negative consequences on the social and political potential of the web in general and eParticipation in particular. A few questions come to mind:

• Could social tension rise online and perpetuate social separation offline?
• Can open data standards and technical help for cross side mobility help to reduce this problem?
• What consequences can be drawn for online campaigning?
• Could a social networking account on a particular site be seen as a social stigma in the future? (Michael Wolff in Business Week: “If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin,” and “And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.”)
• Does decentralized eParticipation on social network need to be tailored to the specific audience of the side?

These are of course just a few questions that could be asked and I am certain that there are many more. What would your answer to these questions and the overall problem of online social separation be?

Picture by: Whimsical Chris

Tags: Facebook, Myspace, personal democracy forum, social networks, social separation