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Do Social Networks Bridge the Digital Divide?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on June 20th, 2008 11:08 AM

Caroline McCarthy has an interesting post about a recent report which suggests social networks are actually educational for youth, rather than simply acting as a time suck. Social networks have rapidly become one of the most predominant communication tools on the web especially for the youth who have flocked to MySpace and more recently, Facebook.

If you haven’t watched the Frontline special “Growing Up Online“, I highly recommend checking it out. The program covers the impact that social networks are having on children growing up today. It is less than an hour long and is an extremely engaging program for anybody to watch.

One of the most interesting highlights of the study, Caroline McCarthy suggests, is that “social networks may be part of the reason that low-income students are largely just as technologically proficient as their peers, contradicting parts of a 2005 Pew study that detailed an economic ‘digital divide.’” The assertion that social networks help to eliminate the digital divide is a substantial one.

This study would also suggest that school policies of blocking access to social networks may not be the best idea. In fact schools should encourage student participation in sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and MyYearbook. Even while social networks may help bridge the digital divide, Danah Boyd suggests that there is yet another divide within social networks: a divide of classes.

While there will continue to be social divides, it appears that social networks tend to create a net positive impact rather than further the existing social divides. Do you agree with the findings of this study?

Posted in Social Networking
  

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 11:08 am and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    A friend of mine teaches in San Diego County's Independent Study program where students are predominantly from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These students, typically, have left their traditional high school due to gang activity or teen pregnancy. And yes, they all have MySpace pages, but that is a long way from conquering the digital divide.

    Students, throughout all US public schools, are groomed to be users (consumers) of technology, rather than creators (entrepreneurs). The divide is the same that it has always been and it falls most heavily on economically disadvantaged students, but underlies all of public education. The real test should be how many of these students are capable of building a simple web application; how many of them blog or understand html and css.
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    One factor in becoming web-proficient and eventually "web savvy" is access to computers and the Internet. Social networks will do little to help bridge the digital divide if underprivileged kids have limited access to the tools of the web.

    Most consumer social networks are sticky do to their highly engaging, fun apps like SuperPoke, with low intellectual value. What knowledge and/ or marketable skills can these kids gain surfing MySpace, Facebook and Bebo? In fact, when was the last time you learned something new and valuable on a consumer social network?

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