Are Facebook Members Higher Achievers?

A new study claims that Facebook users come from families with higher social status and are higher achievers than MySpace members.

A new study shows that which social networking site you use can help show your social status.   According to research by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley, Facebook users comes from homes with a higher income and are more likelyto attend college. By contract, Myspace users usually go straight to work following high school and don’t pursue a degree.   Boyd’s researchalso shows that Facebook users largely tend to be white and belong to families that push them toward college.   “They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in aworld dictated by after school activities.” Boyd has written in a preliminary draft of her study. She found many teens from minorities using MySpace, and added that “MySpace has most ofthe kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.”   In her research, she concludes that people use social networking sites to build a sense ofcommunity. Often, she claims, teens have strong opinions about the social networks they don’t use.