UC Irvine

In my dissertation, I capitalize on two youth-focused supplements to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the gendered digital divide in the transition to adulthood. In the introductory chapter, I begin by bridging scholarship on digital inequalities and the life course to underscore how gender differences in technology may shape young people's pathways to adulthood, including their development of intimate relationships and educational trajectories. In the first empirical chapter, Chapter 2, I set the stage for an investigation of technology use in the transition to adulthood by exploring the social and contextual factors shaping young adults’ technology use through original latent class typologies. Results uncover three latent classes of technology use: High Social Users, Digital Workers, and Less Digitally Engaged. I then demonstrate how latent class membership is shaped by gender and key developmental transitions in schooling, work, and family. In Chapter 3, I build on these findings to explore how latent classes of technology use (described in Chapter 2) predict sex and singlehood in the transition to adulthood. I find that young men who are High Social Users report more frequent sexual intercourse and are less likely to be single than their Less Digitally Engaged counterparts. Women, however, do not see the same intimate returns to their technology use. I argue that gender differences may be explained by men’s long-standing privilege in the young adult hookup culture. Finally, in Chapter 4, I follow a cohort of digital youth from adolescence into young adulthood to investigate whether adolescent technology use predicts future college enrollment. Using methods of latent class analysis, I show that the tech typologies of boys–but not girls–are positively associated with educational trajectories in young adulthood. I argue that this pattern is consistent with boys' greater digital capital–or their ability to translate technology use and skills into positive educational outcomes. Taken together, results reveal the gender paradox of digital engagement. Despite girls and women being amongst the most socially digitally engaged groups of young people, it is boys and young men who benefit from their social use of digital technologies. Thus, by systematically linking gender differences in digital engagement to gender inequalities in developmental outcomes, I advance an understanding of the socio-digital determinants of the transition to adulthood.