clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Social sites reveal class divide

A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.

By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

The conclusions are based on interviews with many teenage users of the social networking sites by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.

"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," she wrote.

By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tends to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.

"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers," she said.