Chapter 10: Avoiding Facebook: low-income youths (negative) discourses about Facebook
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The chapter discusses the findings of a qualitative research on the relationship with Facebook of a group of low-income young people from a metropolitan area of northern Italy. Although Facebook was the most popular social media platform at the time, its appeal was noticeably fading among young people. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with youth from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background, the chapter examines Facebook avoidance, an attitude of disengagement from the platform expressed through different "disconnective strategies". It describes why Facebook was negatively perceived and how this led the study participants to limit or avoid its usage. The author identifies two main attitudes underpinning Facebook avoidance, a defensive and an ideological stance, with different implications in terms of digital inequalities. The chapter contributes to digital inequality research bringing to the fore the perspectives of marginalized subjects and shedding light to the relation between (non-)use of social media and social inequalities among young people.

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