To most Americans MySpace and Facebook have become household names. Even if you don't have an account on one of these social networking sites you have probably heard of them.  Social media has been changing the way youth communicate and share information and may people, from advertising executives to health researchers, have shown interest in exploring the possibilities for harnessing these new technologies. What many people don't know is that there are emerging differences between the sites that need to be taken into consideration.

Recently Dr. Danah Boyd highlighted some of these differences in a talk entitled, "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online" at the Personal Democracy Forum, New York, June 30 2009.  In it she summarizes research that highlights a divergence among youth who use social networking sites along race, class, and education lines.  She describes how teenagers view the two sites and differences among who uses them.  General differences include an association of Facebook with adults, high socio-economic class, snobbery, and being "a goodie-two-shoes", while MySpace was generally associated with deviant subcultures (ex. "ghetto" and "emo"), low socio-economic class, African Americans, and Latinos.

Organizations who venture into social networking sites in health communication efforts should take such perceptions into account along with the demographic differences among the youth who use one site versus another.  Not all such venues are interchangeable and any messages or interactions will be colored by which one is used in addition to the content of such messages.  This line of research suggests that those who are not familiar with the meanings and changing populations represented by such social networking sites cannot assume a one-size-fits-all approach.  Even on popular, widely used sites like Facebook and MySpace there are distinctions that can really matter and target populations or markets have to be specified if we, as health engineers, are to reach them effectively.

Read about Dr. Boyd's talk here, and let us know how you think we can use social networking sites for effective health interventiosn. 

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