Personal Space Online: Navigating Myspace & Facebook Social Networks

MySpace or Facebook?—That is the Question!

Am I on Facebook? You bet. MySpace? Nope. It’s better this way. Let me explain.

I have weighed the pros and cons of getting a MySpace persona. A few of the questions that came up included, “What if it took up as much time as Facebook?” I started a Facebook page my senior year of high school, right after my friends and I decided where to go to college. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg’s masterpiece has been slowly siphoning away my free time! The photo albums only made it worse. MySpace? I can’t afford a MySpace registration—in terms of time, that is.

Yet another membership to a social networking website might turn me into one of those people who stay on the internet when they should be studying, but instead, are snooping through friends’ online profiles to find out what everyone’s up to and reading up on their personal lives. Oh, wait…I actually already do that! And so do you, and so does everyone else. Snooping through online profiles makes it easier to keep in touch. Hey, it’s not snooping if you know the person, right? My friend Lauren, a sophomore, says she signed on for MySpace “to keep in touch with people who weren’t on Facebook, and with people from high school who didn’t go on to college.” She says she uses it to keep in contact with college friends who “think they’re too cool for Facebook.”

Too cool for Facebook? I’d never heard of anything like this before. Somehow, almost all of my friends from high school to college ended up on Facebook. To me, a Facebook page is a necessity of American life—like the television or the microwave. It’s easy to use – all you need to do is give a password, upload a photo, and make a few friends – and most importantly, everyone has one. Somehow, MySpace is different.

MySpace Couture

MySpace (in my experience) is more exclusive. Less of my friends are on MySpace, and it requires a larger investment of time. Besides uploading a photo and making friends, you have to get a cute background for your page, come up with a sassy color scheme, and think of interesting things to say in your blog. It takes five minutes to set up a Facebook page, whereas it might take hours to find a tres cute MySpace layout and blog your emotions in perfect sentences.

I guess I think of MySpace as something more elite, more couture. You see, for college students, time is money, and MySpace requires a bigger time investment. Here’s my theory: those of us who get work done fast enough to have free time, have MySpace. Those of us who lack this luxury stick to Facebook. Having double social networking identities on different sites shows that you’re more adept at getting work done than the average college student – it puts your “wealth” of free time on display.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel somehow under qualified when I say I don’t have a MySpace or Xanga account—as if only belonging to one social networking website shows I’m less able to multitask. I don’t have the resources to make a big time investment into MySpace—there aren’t enough hours in the day. And if time is money, being “only on Facebook” can make you feel sort of deprived. Comparing my Facebook page to a color-coordinated MySpace layout can feel like holding up a Target-brand bag to someone else’s Burberry purse.

MySpace Close-Up

I don’t own any Burberry purses, and I don’t have a MySpace, but sometimes I wonder if I should cave in and get one. What attracts me to MySpace is that it’s like a “Dear Diary” for grownups. Instead of pasting on stickers, we can change the layout; instead of writing in flowery cursive or putting hearts around our names, we can change the font. It can be cute, or it can be serious. It can just be a place to let your feelings out. “I got MySpace my freshman year in college when I really needed to vent,” says my friend Ashley, now a junior. Of course, both men and women have the need to vent, which is the reason MySpace has many male and female bloggers. However, there seem to be many more college women on MySpace than college men. The diary-like aspects of MySpace might be a reason why more college women have accounts there. As my friend Ashley aptly reminds me, blogs have “a more feminine connotation” because of their connection to diary writing—hence the greater attraction for females.

Yet the fact that many women – both teenagers and adults – have such personal and, often, revealing networking sites may make the website a little more dangerous. Sexual predators do target younger girls on MySpace. Just last week, a 19-year-old Nebraska man was charged with sexual assault against a 13-year-old girl he had met on the site. While college women may be smart enough to avoid such situations, it does not mean that it’s smart for us to completely let our guard down. One college woman says people she doesn’t know send her friend requests “every day.” Once a 45-year-old man tried to approach her on MySpace, and another man identifying himself as a photographer asked to “take her picture.” What that could have really meant is anyone’s guess. “If you’re in college you should have enough sense not to go meet somebody you met on MySpace,” she says. “I think everybody should have private profiles, especially young girls.”

Another friend – Tamara, a junior – has an even more cautious view of social networking sites. “Random people do friend you, but I don’t get into that,” she says. “I honestly have issues with exposing children younger than 16 to a lot of issues that go on within the internet.” Ashley takes a middle-of-the-road approach. “I think that MySpace is safe for those who know how to use it,” she says. “I think that you have to realize that meeting people on collegiate networks is unsafe, and as long as you realize that the fun stops when you shut the computer down it should be a safe place to enjoy yourself.”

How much is too much?

MySpace, of course, is more open to the public than Facebook. “At least on Facebook you used to have to be in college, and on MySpace you could be anybody,” Ashley says. She tells me that on MySpace she has no personal contact information – no address, no screen-name, no phone number – while she does have her screen-name and cell phone available to her friends on Facebook. Lauren, on the other hand, tells more about herself on MySpace, because her profile is set to private.

The amount of information you publicly display on any social networking website is your decision. You can share a lot more about yourself than you may like through Facebook photo albums and importing a blog into your notes. However, you can also give out too much information through posting details of your daily life on MySpace. It’s a judgement call – just remember to be cautious and wise, and think through how much information you divulge before you post.

Jobs, Internships, and Social Networking

There’s another potential pitfall of social networking – employers sneaking a peek at your online profile. A student applying for jobs or internships might have their profile searched by someone in the human resources department – usually an alumni of the student’s school, whose Facebook account gives them access to that student’s network. Employers might look up their page to get an idea of what the applicant is really like. If your MySpace page is open to the public, anything you’ve posted on there might as well be on your resume.

It sounds ridiculous, but it happens. At Duke University, our career counselors have made a special point of warning us about this. My roommate volunteers for our campus career center; she’s received countless reminders to warn other students about posting information online that might give employers a bad impression. Tamara is incensed by the fact that employment recruiters think it’s okay to invade the privacy of student applicants. No matter what a student has posted on Facebook, she says, “I don’t think it speaks to the type of person you would be in a boardroom.”

Ashley plans to be cautious. “Just as a safety requirement after I submit my law school applications I will definitely be taking down my Facebook and Myspace pages as recommended by my Dean,” she says.

To get a ‘Space, or not?

I’m staring at the MySpace homepage right now, wondering if it’s worth it. Maybe I should go ahead and get an account- just give in to the blue banner and spend the next three hours making a layout in my favorite colors. There’s so much to think about – whether to put my screen-name on my page or not, what information is appropriate to share, and how much information is too much.

Or maybe I should just get started on the two papers, three assignments, and the final project I have due soon. Tough choice. Oh, well. I decide to waste some time and scroll through the Facebook photo albums. Procrastination is awesome – for the next fifteen minutes, anyway. Then it’s back to the grind. Finals are coming up soon, and library time – not Facebook or MySpace time – is best for helping a college girl stay afloat.

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