Or so concludes a new study by Northwestern University that found the social networking site college freshmen prefer correlates with their race, ethnicity and the level of their parents’ education.
So much for the Internet bringing us all together.
White students more often choose Facebook; Hispanic students use MySpace; Asian and Asian-American students frequent Xanga and Friendster more than any other student ethnic group (although they also use Facebook). And black students showed no statistically significant preference for any one site.
Students trolling Facebook and Xanga are significantly more likely to have parents with a college degree, while those using MySpace more often have parents with less than a high school education.
[Copied from "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites". See reference below.]
In terms of popularity, Facebook ranked number one, then MySpace, followed by Xanga, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo.
The finding was based on a survey of 1,060 freshman from the University of Illinois, dubbed one the 10 most ethnically diversity college campuses in the country by US News & World Report in 2006.
The study is featured in October issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites - author Eszter Hargittai
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