Tonight at youth group I wanted to have more of a discussion than an official Bible study. I know, heresy. But I was really curious about what my student’s perceptions were with regards to Facebook and MySpace. I also wanted to take that opportunity to discuss in brief how to make wise choices online.
My students vary in age from 12 years old to 17 years old. I found that 66% of my students have a MySpace profile. 41% have a Facebook profile. 25% have both.
I then asked them which they prefer, MySpace or Facebook. They answered unanimously that they preferred MySpace. I asked why. Here are their answers, in no particular order:
- MySpace is easier to use.
- No annoying “invitations.” They said they all hated being pummeled by invitations to things like “you’ve been bit by a zombie.”
- Easier to send messages to friends / leave comments.
They quickly followed up with one thing they liked about Facebook: they didn’t get “30 friend invitations each day from strippers and ho’s.” That just made my day when I heard them say that.
Overall, I got the impression that they didn’t see much value in Facebook but were still heavy users of MySpace.
8 Comments
interesting. i’d say my group is a little more leaning toward Facebook, as far as preferred. But I haven’t ask them – though I was actually planning on talking about it briefly Sunday morning.
Yeah my group leans more towards FBook as well, although I would say more than half use neither FBook or MySpace.
In fact, last week a couple of my girls said they were “protesting” Facebook because it’s “stupid” and “why would I want to tell people my favorite movies? why don’t they just ask me?”
Of course, it probably doesn’t help that I’ve told them more than once that it’s only a matter of time that Google becomes a part of their brains…
Sounds like I’m one of your kids.
Based on my sample (my daughter’s hockey team – lol) most kids have myspace and college students have f’book.
Jake, sounds like you need to tell your kids how to control their settings on myspace. My daughter never gets those kinds of invites on myspace … neither do I
I wonder how much of teenager’s opinions about this stuff is taken from the adults around them. Like when a student says “why don’t they just say it to my face” I immediately think that sounds like something an adult would say.
My kids are exactly the opposite, actually. In fact, I don’t even know anyone who still uses MySpace.
I hear that a lot, Tim. I wonder why my students are so different :/
In my classes, the average high school student seems to be more into FBook. They seem to think it is more mature – perhaps because FBook started out for college kids?