It’s hard to leave your social status behind, even on the Internet, and two popular social networking sites–Facebook and MySpace–are being held up as a perfect example.

Research focused in the United States suggests Facebook generally draws those with higher education and social status.

“Existing social divisions translate online,” said Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor in the Communications Studies Department of Northwestern University in Chicago. “These sites are mainly used for hanging out with people you already know.”

Hargittai’s research found a difference by race, ethnicity and parental education in the United States as to who uses Facebook versus MySpace. Hispanic students, for example, are more likely to use MySpace because that’s where “their friends hang out.” Facebook, it seems, is for the more upwardly mobile.

“It’s about who you know, what you’re doing, where do you go, where were you on your holiday,” said Shirley Steinberg, an expert in media literacy and popular culture at McGill University.

“Just the use of the words ‘status update’ has a middle-class implication.”

MySpace doesn’t do any of that, said Steinberg, associate professor at McGill’s Department of Integrated Studies in Education.

“The title, ‘MySpace,’ itself implies that it’s personal.”

She said MySpace users generally tend to be in their early teens up to the age of about 22, and the site is known for attracting musicians and artists and for letting its users be creative.

The same divisions don’t exist in Canada, but that’s more because MySpace has such a low profile north of the border.

“We are a Facebook country,” said Rhonda McEwen, who teaches in the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto and specializes in new media and the information practices of young people.

It may be because Canadian academics who travelled to the United States started using Facebook and immigrants who came to large Canadian cities also were Facebook users, McEwen suggests. But by the time Canada caught on to social networking, MySpace was more for teenagers and not seen as serious.

Everyone from teens to grandparents in Canada uses Facebook, she said.

“The younger teens here don’t know MySpace. They don’t even recognize the term, which is really surprising to me, given how big it is in the United States.”