75% Of Homeless Youth Use Social Networks

A small study conducted by a team at the University of Alabama shows that 75% of the homeless youth surveyed use social networks, with usage patterns surprisingly similar to that of college students.

Rosanna Guadagno of the University led the investigation, which surveyed 237 college students and 65 homeless youth, all with an average age of just over 19 years old.  Over 90% of the college kids were active on social networks, whereas three-quarters of the homeless youth were.  The similarity comes from both groups reporting they spend more than an hour per day using the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

These results call for a paradigm shift in researchers’ understanding of technology use and indicate that contemporary young adults sampled across socio-economic class and varying ethnicities are far more similar than prior research would suggest.

This shows some rather startling conclusions.  Maybe in the age of the "digital divide," the concept of group differences based upon their socio-economic position are not so relevant anymore.  It's a possible indicator that financial backgrounds doesn't necessarily correlate with internet use as such.  Maybe the "digital divide" isn't actually much of a divide?

Source: Science Direct

Jason England