Boyd's "White Flight in Networked Publics?”

Dana Boyd’s “White Flight in Networked Publics?” begins with a comment from Kat, a fourteen-year-old from a charter school outside of Boston. In 2007, Boyd asked Kat why her friends were moving from MySpace to Facebook. Kat’s response: Myspace is more “Ghetto”.

In the article, Boyd uses data collected from 2004-2009—interviews and observations from teens in diverse communities across 17 states, 2,000 hours of observation of online practices, and 10,000 randomly selected MySpace profiles—to form the argument that teen preference for one form of social media over another reflects “a reproduction of social categories that exist in schools throughout the United States”. The choice is racialized and reinforced because of self-segregation in schools.

Personally, I don’t know how much I agree with this. I missed the MySpace boat. I don’t really remember if I just wasn’t interested or if it had anything to do with my mom. She was very overprotective (I wasn’t allowed the watch MTV at 16 :I) And I didn’t join Facebook until 2009, when a long-distance friend pretty much bullied me into it. Maybe I was just out of the loop, but I do remember a few people from school having MySpace profiles. In my experience, it just seemed to fizzle out when Facebook became more popular. Facebook was newer and therefore better.

Anyway, Boyd goes on to say that a teen’s social world is shaped by race, and that in terms of their choice of social network, a distinction emerged. Facebook was more popular with white, more affluent teens. Boyd writes that “one way to conceptualize the division that unfolded is through the lens of white flight”. She likens teens moving to Facebook with white exodus to the suburbs. Boyd then notes, “Drawing parallels between these two events sheds light on how people’s engagement with technology reveals social division and the persistence of racism”.

In schools (even diverse schools), children self-segregate by race. There are social categories that come along with labels: “cheerleaders”, “goths”, “nerds”. These social categories mark people and groups based on a shared identity. According to Boyd, online spaces are also often organized by social categories.

Many teens cited personal preference as their reason for switching from MySpace to Facebook. They liked the features or the aesthetics. Also, many noted that pressure from friends (or simply following their friends to the new site) caused them to switch. Boyd mentions that “teens choose to use the social network sites that their friends use”. I say, “duh.” Isn’t that the whole point of social media sites… to be social? Again, I think that these are more plausible reasons for the switch. Teens often have a strong sense of FOMO. They want to be like their friends; they don’t want to be left behind or seen as different.

But Boyd says that this doesn’t disconnect their departure from issues of race. (?) She concludes that their experience with race and class shape their attitude towards aesthetics and features. I’m still not completely convinced.