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"Mature Enough to Handle it?": Gendered Parental Interventions in and Adolescents' Reactions to Technology Use During the Pandemic
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

"Mature Enough to Handle it?": Gendered Parental Interventions in and Adolescents' Reactions to Technology Use During the Pandemic

Hillary Steinberg, Stefanie Mollborn and Jennifer Pace
Journal of family issues, v 45(1), pp 237-258
01 Jan 2024
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X221150979View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open CC BY V4.0

Abstract

Family Studies Social Sciences
This study investigated how teenagers reacted to parental regulation of technology. Using longitudinal dyadic interviews with 24 teenagers and their 21 parents in two predominantly white middle-class communities, we explored how teenagers used technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and the differential consequences parental interventions had for teens' well-being and confidence with technology. Parents' narratives and actions about technology use were deeply gendered. Boys felt confident about their self-regulation of technology, and parents did not substantially limit boys' technology use during the pandemic. Girls were less confident about their ability to self-regulate and either worked with their mothers to manage technology, distrusted parents who monitored them, or lacked access to virtual hangout spaces such as video games and social media. The findings illustrate how parent-teen dynamics around adolescent technology use can produce short-term gendered inequalities in teenagers' well-being and result in long-term disadvantages for girls.

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4 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

Source: SDGs in the Output

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Family Studies
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