“Mature Enough to Handle it?”: Gendered Parental Interventions in and Adolescents’ Reactions to Technology Use During the Pandemic

Abstract

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.

Introduction

Adolescents connect with peers through technology, using social media, video games, and texting as virtual spaces to hang out with friends. Parents are ambivalent and anxious about teenagers’ technology use and its repercussions for their current and long-term well-being (Livingston and Blum-Ross, 2019; Vickery, 2017). In response to these competing pressures, parents must choose whether and how they will regulate their children’s technology use. Relatively little is known about how teenagers navigate these regulations and what patterns of inequality may develop. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an unparalleled dilemma for parents, as in-person interactional options became limited. While teenagers turned to technology to fill this gap (Guessoum et al., 2020), it is unclear if there have been changes in how teenagers navigate and parents regulate technology during this large-scale shift.

This study investigated teenagers’ reactions to parental attitudes and interventions, and uncovered gendered implications for teenagers’ use of digital social spaces. Gender matters for parenting in general and for the choices around technology that parents make (boyd, 2014; Vickery, 2017). In this study, gender emerged from the data as an important logic parents used to justify their interventions around teenagers’ technology use. Conversely, teenagers did not reference gender in understanding technology use. Gendered dynamics around parenting and technology were already solidified in these families before the pandemic. However, these patterns of inequality were exacerbated as teenagers were forced to stay home with less peer contact and further embedded in the family. Parental strategies had implications for teenagers’ well-being during the pandemic. Furthermore, they could have long-term consequences for girls who experienced less access to technology and a lack of confidence in their technology or social skills. This research is not meant to arbitrate if and how technology use may impact teenagers positively or negatively. Rather, it examines the interactions between parents and teenagers around technology and uncovers disadvantages for girls.

Background

Adolescents’ Use of Networked Publics

Friendships and peer interactions are crucial for healthy adolescent development. This is partially why the COVID-19 pandemic has been so difficult for many teenagers, who no longer attended in person the institutions that house their friends (Ghosh et al., 2020; Matthewman and Huppatz, 2020). Normally, teenagers create rich youth cultures with enduring friendships (Adler & Peter, 1998; Khan, 2013). Online spaces can serve as a place for youth to engage socially. Teenagers today use technology in most spheres of their lives and rely on it to engage in social activities via networked publics. Networked publics are digital social technologies that construct space, house social interaction, and circulate knowledge (boyd, 2014; Itō and Project Muse, 2010). They can include social media and virtual spaces such as texting, video chatting, and group chats.

Teenagers mostly use networked publics to join spaces that are interest-driven, such as games, message boards, or groups, and (overwhelmingly) to interact with peers in their existing social networks (boyd, 2007; Itō and Project Muse, 2010; Livingstone, 2008; Valenzuela, Park, and Kee, 2009). Users have long utilized mechanisms like email to strengthen existing friendships (Howard et al., 2001) and familial bonds (Hughes and Hans, 2001). Teenagers use networked publics to engage with their friends in similar ways to in person, in contrast with their parents’ assumptions that they contact strangers (boyd, 2007; Itō and Project Muse, 2010; Pascoe, 2011; Vickery, 2017).

Parental Control and Youth Reactions

Adolescence is considered a period when teenagers establish their identities, and social relationships are particularly important (Erikson and Erikson, 1998). Most teenagers are dependent on parents, who give them both material and immaterial resources (Mollborn, 2017). Adolescence is socially constructed as a period of conflict (Montemayor, 1983). However, affirmation of teenagers’ independent identity, especially by parents, is integral to their well-being (Fish et al., 2020; Mueller & Seth, 2016; Schalet, 2011; Steinberg, 2020). Youth often use technology to bond with their parents (Vaterlaus et al., 2019).

Existing research has demonstrated how children’s gender shapes the different ways parents raise their children (Elliott, 2012; Hardie, 2015; Kane, 2012; Messner, 2009; Schalet, 2011). Less time has been spent capturing the experiences of youth around technology use. Girls are treated differently by parents regarding technology because parents worry about their vulnerability online. They are expected to avoid dangers and navigate virtual spaces with more caution, especially around sexual concerns. Mothers are often responsible for regulating technology, and they account for perceived risk in making decisions (Fletcher and Blair, 2014). Girls whose parents support their technology use and allow them to self-regulate are more likely to be digital leaders (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2019).

While many institutions impact how teenagers use technology, parental attitudes and behaviors are potent for youth. Adults often focus more on protecting children from modern social ills rather than helping youth develop autonomy (Margolin, 1978; Renfro, 2020). Thus, according to qualitative studies, teenagers’ use of digital media is often heavily surveilled and regulated by parents (Wisniewski et al., 2017). Parents’ endeavors to control youth conflict with teenagers’ struggles for privacy. Privacy is a social construction that reflects cultural values (boyd and Marwick, 2017). Many steps taken by parents to ensure teenagers’ privacy from strangers erode teenagers’ privacy within the family. Further, how teenagers seek privacy is related to who they feel has power over them (boyd, 2014; Livingstone, 2008). Parents who generally control teenagers’ behaviors also tend to have more strict technology rules and assert authority by lessening physical and online privacy (Itō and Project Muse, 2010). Parental control of teenagers’ online behavior is more effective if children accept parental authority (Symons et al., 2020). Teenagers sometimes internalize parents’ perspectives and accept control, but others find ways to resist. Some become proficient in dodging monitoring surveillance (Rafalow, 2020; Vickery, 2015).

Youth and technology is a complicated topic. Evidence of a link between technology use and poor mental health has been mixed, and some research shows no difference by gender (Vuorre et al., 2021). The fact is that teenagers are influenced by social factors that they bring with them online; vulnerable youth will be so there as well (Babskie and Metzger, 2018; Pascoe, 2011; Vickery, 2017). However, children do not have poorer social skills due to technology use (Downey and Gibbs, 2020). Digital media is a tool rather than a direct indicator of developmental fitness.

Technology Use in the COVID-19 Pandemic

At this point, we must rely on emerging research about youth and their experiences of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has been a shared experience, adolescents were particularly at risk. They were removed from public and interactional spaces such as schools or community activities in the spring of 2020 and at some other points (Paceley et al., 2021; Raman et al., 2020). The pandemic rendered disadvantaged youth even more vulnerable (Gabriel et al., 2020) and exposed which children were ill-prepared for a more digital life when schools moved online (Iivari et al., 2020). Although teenagers are sometimes less susceptible to COVID-19 physically, they may be more vulnerable to psychosocial impacts (Ghosh et al., 2020; Matthewman and Huppatz, 2020).

Individuals were undoubtedly stressed and using more technology because of social distancing precautions taken during the pandemic. Little is known about how these factors are connected and how they impact youth. At the onset of the pandemic, both parents and children (as per parent reports) with higher levels of anxiety were more likely to turn to technology, including social media and phones, to connect (Drouin et al., 2020). Teenagers, including those experiencing anxiety, felt it was important for their emotional well-being to maintain access to social media apps (Biernesser et al., 2020; Cauberghe et al., 2020). However, it is unclear if this relationship is causal. Teenagers used networked publics to maintain social ties to others and their communities during the pandemic (Goldstein and Flicker, 2020). Notably, there is evidence that LGBTQ-identified adolescents sheltering in place with unsupportive families turned to online spaces for social support during this time (Fish et al., 2020; Paceley et al., 2021).

The literature demonstrates how parents understand technology in gendered ways and how teenagers navigate technology in general. In this study, we explore more specifically how teenagers reported that parental intervention impacted them. Although teenage participants did not use gender to understand technology, parents relied on gendered logics. The pandemic, with its accompanying orders for teenagers to stay in their homes, magnified these gender dynamics. We examined how teenagers described these experiences, uncovering inequalities.

Methods

Data

In the tradition of studying how youth navigate the “digital age” in everyday settings (Rafalow, 2020), this study analyzed longitudinal qualitative data collected in two neighboring middle-to upper-middle-class communities in the United States between 2015 and 2020. Our primary data consisted of 45 dyadic interviews collected in 2020 from 24 teenagers and their 21 parents in 18 families. Additional data used to contextualize the interviews with teenagers came from larger samples and multiple data sources: earlier in-home observations, two waves of parent interviews, and focus groups with parents. All names here are pseudonyms, and a few details have been scrambled to preserve confidentiality, especially between teenagers and their parents.

Wave 1 was collected from 2015–2016 in the United States interior West. The communities we recruited from had a substantial technology sector, higher median housing prices than the state average, and a larger proportion of white residents ¹ (United States Census Bureau, 2017). We recruited participants broadly for a study about “parents, kids, and well-being.” We deliberately diversified the sample by identifying participants from varied social networks (Lofland and Lofland, 2006) through social media postings, email listservs, personal contacts, referrals, and public flyers. The resulting nonrepresentative sample included various families from different sociodemographic backgrounds and neighborhoods, including families from 23 elementary schools and homeschoolers. Thirty-three interviews were with parents from the 30 fourth- or fifth-grade families who also participated in-home observations, and another 21 were with parents of elementary-aged children who participated in an interview but no observation.

At Wave 2, which focused particularly on technology use, 21 parents from 20 families—mostly observation families—were re-interviewed 2 years later. Of these, 17 families participated in 2020. Wave 3 was conducted in April-May 2020 with 23 parents from 20 families using online interviewing. Data collection occurred during and immediately after a statewide stay-at-home order that closed schools and spurred work from home. We collected baseline data about teenagers’ pre-pandemic everyday lives, health lifestyles, and technology use, and then collected information about the same phenomena during the pandemic. Most families had one or more children in high school. Wave 4 online interviews were conducted with 24 teenagers from 18 of the 20 Wave 3 families. All teenagers in the Wave 3 families were eligible. Participants were 12–18 years old, averaging 15 years of age. All interviews ² were conducted in July-August 2020, during a statewide “safer at home” order with all but one family (who lived in a neighboring county) required by county regulations to wear masks and practice social distancing. Teenagers’ interviews usually took place privately.

Across waves, we followed these families for almost 5 years as their children progressed from elementary school into middle and high school. Throughout the study, participants received $50 for a standalone interview, focus group, or key informant interview or $200 for a home observation with an interview. Data collection was institutional review board approved.

Wave 1 parent participants averaged age 43, and 80 percent were mothers. Seventy-seven percent were married, 17 percent divorced/separated, and a few were single or widowed. 86 percent of parents identified as white, 8 percent Asian American, and 6 percent Latino, so we could not analyze data based on racial/ethnic variation. Some parents were foreign-born. Based on parent and partner education, occupations, and observed housing quality at Wave 1, we classified 59 percent of families as upper-middle-class, 29 percent as middle-class or mixed socioeconomic status (e.g., higher education but lower occupational status), and 12 percent as working-class or poor. Of the teenagers, we interviewed 13 boys and 12 girls. ³

Analyses

We manually coded electronic copies of interview transcripts, reading entire transcripts to identify important emergent themes, which were subsequently coded (Deterding and Waters 2018). We began with open coding of the interviews with teenagers. Technology-related content was previously coded in Waves 1 and 2. Finally, we conducted longitudinal and dyadic analyses comparing teenagers’ with their parents’ Wave 3 and 4 interview transcripts, supplemented by Wave 1 and 2 interview transcripts and Wave 1 observation field notes for that family.

Our methodological approach was inductive and interpretive, using data to explore processes through which parents and teens made sense of, communicated with each other about, and talked to us about technology use during the pandemic. Our analysis focused on narratives about technology use and their implications for teens, parents, and inequalities, grounded in what participants told and showed us about their experiences and sense-making (Lofland and Lofland, 2006). We worked to ensure the protection of our respondents’ identities but also that the family dynamic was not altered by participation in this study. Thus, a few of our examples are composites, meaning some events described happened to multiple participants. Similarly, we did not specify the diagnoses of interviewees with developmental disabilities. While all such diagnoses included either attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism, we used the broader developmental disability label. Our goal was not to adjudicate whether technology use is good or bad or to what extent parents should control teenagers. Instead, we used these unique dyadic perspectives to understand how interactions around technology produce unequal patterns.

Findings

We found, in general, that boys enjoyed more autonomy and less regulation from parents than girls. This pattern emerged in themes such as trusting boys to manage physical activity, diet, friendships, and COVID protocols independently. We focus here on technology use not only because of its implications for engagement with technology but because of the inequalities it may have produced for wellbeing when teenagers were isolated from peers.

Parental Attitudes Toward Technology

We collected data in the form of parent interviews when the teenagers in the study were in middle school (Wave 2). These data suggested parents were unsure of how to navigate technology and relied on gendered logics to intervene with their children. Parents associated boys with video game use, even though boys used all manner of networked publics. In general, while they had anxiety about video game use, they saw the problem as solvable. Some parents articulated concerns about addiction to video games or worried that their sons spent too much time in a fantasy world, with negative consequences for their offline interactions. Nina said of her son Collin in wave 2:

He’s my gamer. And then he doesn’t have to deal with the real world. So we had a really good discussion about this kind of stuff. You go, “Hey, but I want you to know there’s a real world out there. There’s real people. This is not real people in your games. That’s not real people. You have to start engaging with real people.” And so for him, we are having to pull the technology away because he is almost getting lost in it. And I don’t know how much of it is real world in his mind and how much of it is just a game. I’m thinking this is where he’s learning things. This is where he’s getting his cues from.

Parents like Nina brought up video games as a mechanism for sons to disengage from the real world and saw this as overwhelmingly negative. Though this sentiment was common in Wave 2, it only lingered for some parents of boys in Wave 3. By high school, most parental fears around boys’ addiction to video games had faded.

Parents had much more negative views of girls’ technology use, by which they often meant social media. Parents discussed a constellation of worries about girls’ technology use that left them unsure of how to protect them. Diane in Wave 2 did not worry about her son’s use of social media but said of her daughter, “I’ve read quite a bit, and it’s generally the females [who use social media] because stereotypically females are more wired, and it’s certainly true with my daughter, to be socially connected.” Parents sometimes relied on alleged biological differences to justify limiting daughters’ access to technology. Lisa described in Wave 2 how social media use among middle-school girls was a disaster because they were “all starting their periods” and she worried her daughter would engage in “bitchy little conversations with girlfriends.” Parents also worried about how vulnerable girls could be to sexual victimization such as sexting scandals or human trafficking. Many felt regulating the use of social media was an appropriate protective measure for their daughters, but not for their sons. Beth, for example, said she did not allow her daughter to walk alone and restricted technology use lest she “become the victim of anything.” Mothers cited concerns about poor self-esteem, sexualization, and mental health in girls’ technology use by using feminist language. Many parents explicitly referenced gender in their reasoning, while others did not. Girls’ social orientations were accepted as natural but risky in the context of technology use in a way that boys’ orientations to technology use were not.

While many parents relied heavily on gendered logics to understand teens’ technology use, no teenagers did. They all took for granted that most teenagers used social media, texting, and video chats to stay connected, and those who were barred from doing so were seen as having controlling parents. Some girls played video games and some did not, but gender was not cited as a reason for engagement or disengagement. Teenagers did not view boys as more vulnerable to video game addiction or girls as more at risk to the alleged dangers of social media.

Parental Interventions and Teenage Reactions

How teenagers navigated technology depended on how their parents regulated technology use. While all students had access to a device for school because districts provided them, not all teenagers had uniform access to technology for recreational purposes. How teenagers used technology in their free time was surprisingly homogenous in our sample for boys and more heterogeneous for girls. All boys expressed confidence about their self-regulation around technology, which reflected two kinds of parenting decisions: a lack of parental regulation, or for boys with ADHD or autism, limiting time on video games. The parents in the latter group largely stopped their efforts to limit video game use during the pandemic. None of the boys felt they were doing poorly socially during the pandemic considering the situation. They reported being able to either play video games with friends or engage with them in outdoor sports activities at a distance. Brett described the situation as tough but said he and his friends “kept in a pretty good relationship.” Girls typically described more social and emotional turmoil.

All parents and teenagers described teens using technology more frequently during the first few months of the pandemic lockdown. Beyond utilizing devices for school, teenagers used technology to connect with their existing friends via whichever platforms they had access to and had been using before the onset of school closures: social media, video games, video chatting, and/or texting. All teenagers with access to devices described using some form of networked publics to contact existing friends, though for some this meant email and texting rather than video games or social media. Most preferred social media, when they had access to it, over other mechanisms such as email or video chatting. Some boys and girls were still using social media to connect to friends they had made online in interest-driven forums. The pandemic and subsequent isolation from teenagers’ in-person peer worlds represented an intensification both of teenagers’ online activities and parents’ attitudes toward technology.

Boys and Self-Regulation

Boys expressed confidence in their ability to self-regulate technology use. They tended not to question their relationships to technology in everyday life, and some struggled to think critically about technology use in interviews because it was so taken for granted. Boys mentioned using social media in similar ways to girls, mainly to stay in touch with existing friends when those friends were not physically present. For instance, Zane reported that before the pandemic he used Instagram when he was not in school. Collin’s use was similar. He said, “For me, it’s a way of contacting my friends a lot easier, and spending time with them even when I can’t see them in person.” Brett set screen time restrictions on his own phone but still allowed himself to stay in touch with friends using social media. He made jokes in his interview about TikTok being addictive, but he saw this as a nonissue because he felt he regulated his use well. Roscoe said he did not use Snapchat much but had an account “out of necessity.” While boys were more confident about their use of social media, they did not report using it differently from girls.

Boys relied on video games as virtual meeting rooms and described this strategy as socially successful. Most teenage boys cited video games as an integral way of keeping up with their friends. Nikolai described gaming as inherently social, saying, “Why should I do this game when no one else is playing it?” and claiming he did not like playing alone. Zane talked about playing video games with his friends more during the pandemic because it represented the epidemiologically safest option for social interaction. He had developed positive views about his ability to regulate his screen time and said, “Well, as of the last couple of years, I’ve usually had pretty good self-control.” He commented that his sister lacked this and had more rules. While some felt their peers relied on technology too much, they viewed themselves as aware of their personal limits and thus could avoid becoming addicted. Gabe said he did not need rules around technology because he had learned self-control in the last few years. Speaking about the health of his peers, he said, “Some are better than others. I feel like some just play video games a lot and kind of just don’t get as much sleep and stuff like that.” The only boy who asked for intervention from his parents with time spent playing video games was Caden, one of the youngest interviewees.

Some parents whose sons had developmental diagnoses reported limiting their sons’ video game use prior to the pandemic. There was concern that the boys spent too much time playing video games, especially during the pandemic, and their diagnoses were referenced as a reason for this concern. By Wave 3, some described arguing about gaming, but most had not taken steps toward limiting access. While these parents felt their sons were gaming too much, they explicitly said they decided the issue was not worth arguing about during the pandemic. ⁴ Jessica said of relaxing her rules for Zane:

I would say the majority of technology use for Zane is gaming now, which I’m not happy about, but again, I’m not going to die on that mountain. I feel like I’m such a different person than I was with this interview the last time, because I was the psycho mom. I was the one who was like, “One hour a day.” And then I had to let it go. I just let it go. So he does the [gaming system].

Similarly, Roscoe’s parents worried about him playing more video games during the pandemic but did not intervene because they acknowledged it was one of the only ways for him to connect with his friends. At the same time, Roscoe, who had a diagnosed developmental disability, felt confident about his technology regulation and deftly used technology to pursue his academic interests, keep up with current events, and coordinate workouts with friends. Collin, whose mother Nina worried that video games would impede his ability to make friends in the real world, navigated virtual gaming quite socially. While these parents had been concerned about technology use at younger ages, most had not limited or barred access to video games once the boys were in high school, and none reported having such limitations once the pandemic started.

During the pandemic, boys were expected to regulate their use of video games without parental intervention. While this may have been a change based on developmental progress, parents cited the pandemic as the time they stepped away from regulating boys’ technology use. Diane, for example, allowed her son Gabe to stay up late playing video games provided he had completed his schoolwork. Alongside some concerns, many parents viewed video games as social and potentially beneficial for sons. Marie was glad Isaac used online platforms to play board games with his friends. Joyce used gendered logic to explain her children’s differing relationships with technology. She felt girls used it more interpersonally. However, her son Reed described using social media and video games recreationally in social ways. Joyce did not intervene with Reed’s technology use and instead described modeling regulation with technology, saying, “So we share that with Reed. Like, okay, we’re not having our phones in bed. It’s really bad for us. So Reed now, we talked about that.” Reed knew his mother worried about how much time he spent using technology but did not himself profess this worry. Boys did not discuss worrying much about what their parents thought of their technology use.

Girls Regulating in Collaboration with Mothers

Boys expressed confidence about their self-regulation around technology, which reflected two kinds of parenting decisions: a lack of parental regulation, or for boys with a developmental diagnosis, limiting time on video games until the pandemic. Girls tended to fit into one of three discrete categories: they worked with mothers, had their technology monitored, or did not have access to social media or smartphones. Girls said they did not typically feel they could self-regulate their technology use but seemed to do best navigating social media when they had mutual trust with their parents, who worked with them to solve problems. This category represented the smallest number of teenagers in the sample. Kyla appreciated that her mother Julia became less strict about technology use between Waves 2 and 3. Julia helped Kyla develop hobbies using social media and taught her to be discerning about how advertisements targeted her promoting unhealthy habits. Maeve spoke about working with her daughter Clara to navigate technology. Clara had an incident before the pandemic when she was bullied and slut-shamed by peers. When they began attacking her online, Clara said, “I tried not to take it personally. It got a little hard, just because it was constant. So that’s why I blocked them.” Blocking them proved to be effective, and the problem disappeared. While Clara did not say that her mother explicitly told her to take these steps, she did make it clear Maeve was supportive of her decisions during this time. Similarly, Elena asked her mother Pamela to help her put screen limits her phone during the pandemic. Elena had shared her concerns about her increased usage once school was online. While Pamela had never regulated Elena’s technology use, she worked with her to create those guidelines when asked.

Girls who worked with parents and stayed connected with friends described more engagement with friends than other girls but spoke about struggling with feeling isolated more than boys. Kyla admitted to being lonelier during the pandemic, and while she worried about her mental health, she connected with friends through social media. Throughout her interview, she mentioned being concerned that she overused her phone. However, ultimately, she felt confident about her ability to regulate her own use, saying, “I can manage it myself more responsibly.” However, this was in direct comparison to her brother in elementary school, who had a developmental disability that her mother blamed for his inability to regulate his own use. Clara said she was on screens constantly at the start of the pandemic to stay connected with friends. She assumed her mother Maeve was not happy about this but understood why Clara would rely heavily on social media during this time. While these girls were confident about their ability to maintain connections with friends, they expressed less confidence with technology overall compared to male peers. This group and the boys without diagnoses described the least amount of conflict with parents around technology use. They also reported higher well-being and stronger social ties than the other girls in the sample, on par with the boys.

Girls Being Surveilled

A second group of girls reported anxiety and familial turmoil stemming from their parents monitoring their electronics. While these parents did not limit their daughters’ phone usage, they did monitor usage by taking their phones to read content viewed or sent, or by using apps that reported which apps and sites teenagers visited. While many parents engaged in these practices in middle school, some still did with daughters in high school. Kira said her mother Marie monitored her phone. Marie would ask for the phone to look through or would remove it from Kira’s room. According to Kira, these checks on the content of her phone seemed random and caused conflict. “If I don’t [give it to her], then I get yelled at in the morning if I don’t do it. I don’t know, because I’m kind of scared of keeping it in my room [and not handing it over] just in case. I don’t like getting yelled at.” Her brother did not describe having this interaction with Marie. These parents still worried about their daughters’ vulnerability, especially about their sexuality and “stranger danger.” Olivia stated that her mother Beth would take her phone and look at her interactions online whenever they had a disagreement. She categorized this as an invasion of privacy and linked it to controlling parenting more generally. Olivia did not trust Beth’s opinions on technology because:

A lot of people think like any technology is bad. There’s a lot of disagreement and a lot of the parents think like, “You know, you can’t be friends with someone you met online. That’s always dangerous, that’s always a bad idea.” And it’s not.

Girls who had their phones monitored typically dreaded the experience and considered these interactions to be stressful.

While a few parents noted that they took away technology from their boys in middle school (and those boys had developmental diagnoses), no boys faced this consequence in high school. However, parents who monitored their daughters were also the most likely to punish their daughters for the content they viewed or for information the parents gleaned from reading their communications. This consequence most often involved cutting off access to technology and peers. At Wave 3, Michelle told us that she did not interfere with her daughter Isabella’s technology use because it did not impact her schoolwork and she trusted her to act appropriately online. A few months later, Isabella’s account was different. At the onset of the pandemic, Michelle found Isabella had been engaged in low-risk activities with friends whom her mother previously forbade her to see. Her mother responded by pulling her out of school and taking away all technology. Isabella said of the punishment:

Yeah, I mean, it was a [a long time] of me not being able to go on at all…Well, it was until … I asked my mom, like, "When am I going to be able to go on again?" …We had a discussion about it, but since then I haven't heard anything about when I'm getting it back, or it's scary to ask because I'm scared of my parents now.

Isabella described negative impacts on her mental health since being cut off from technology. She felt she was “useless” and had begun to engage in unhealthy behaviors. Isabella tried to counter her parents' surveillance and control of her technology use but ultimately lost all contact with her friends during the pandemic.

Girls whose parents monitored their technology use distrusted parents’ or other adults’ beliefs. They felt their parents did not understand how they used technology, overstated perceived risks, and staged ineffective interventions. They felt their parents had the wrong idea about technology use. Isabella thought it was “stupid” to put limits on technology because it led to obsession and did not teach teenagers how to manage themselves. Kira felt adults did not understand that technology was good for communication and learning about new topics and instead just saw it as dangerous. Olivia said she chose to distrust her mother Beth’s viewpoint and parenting style, highlighting Beth’s attitude toward technology as an example. While the data cannot document impacts on these girls in the long term, they illuminated short-term downsides to strict regulation of technology.

A Lack of Access to Technology

By high school, there were no boys who had never had access to either video games or social media, although some first gained access to certain apps like Instagram or TikTok in high school. All boys had a smartphone, and most lobbied successfully for apps such as Instagram in middle school. In contrast, some girls were never given access to recreational applications, including social media accounts. They generally either had flip phones or used the devices given to them by their schools. In fact, no interviewee mentioned any boys they knew lacking access to technology, although many mentioned girls. These girls, however, primarily used texting to keep in touch with peers when not at school or in enrichment activities. They were the most likely to have strict parental regulation of screen time. These families were middle class to high income and thus did not represent a lack of access through a digital divide (Rafalow, 2020; Vickery, 2017). Instead, restricting access was a deliberate choice because parents believed their girls were too young or immature to handle the temptations of technology.

Girls who lacked access to social media or video games typically expressed that they were immature or predisposed to an addiction to technology. They professed more social anxiety leading up to and during the pandemic and were more likely to describe themselves as socially awkward or anxious. More so than their peers, they believed teenagers to be less mature, trustworthy, or able to act independently. By extension, they expressed that they themselves were not capable in general. Allie had never had access to social media and described herself as “bad at talking.” Some girls felt this was because they did not have the same contacts to maintain relationships that their peers did. Lisa cautioned her daughter Natalie that social media would cause Natalie’s life to go down the drain and described her as “not mature enough to handle social media.” Lisa talked at length about the “low level of conflict” the family constantly experienced around screen time. However, Natalie said she accepted that her phone is set to turn off after a set amount of screen time because she “knows it’s good for her.” These daughters internalized that they were not trustworthy enough to navigate technology. Allie reported she had trouble connecting because most of her friends were on social media. She said she did not want a smartphone because she “tend [ed] to ruin things” and worried she would become addicted, citing how teenagers have less self-control. Her mother Janet began to doubt if she made the right choice to bar Allie from getting a smartphone:

I think she misses out on a lot of stuff by not having an iPhone. Because we’ll see groups of girls that met up and I’m, “Oh, look, there’s all your friends.” And she doesn’t know because they’ve all got a little chat going or something on the iPhones. Somebody has to text her. And so then anyway … so I do wonder about that, and if she would be more connected to more people and going back to that holding things in. If you had an iPhone, but we’re not willing to do that, and I don’t know if that’s the right decision. I think we’re protecting her in one way, but in another way, I almost feel like we’re screwing her.

Janet identified an inherent problem with restricting her daughter’s phone use: while she believed this might “protect” her daughter from social media’s perceived harms, it left her more socially isolated.

Mixed Parenting Interventions

Children of divorced parents helped illuminate how some teenagers internalized parents’ attitudes about technology. Sons of divorced parents did not mention a difference in technology use and did not seem to face many restrictions in either household. Both parents and daughters described different levels of technology use when staying with one parent versus the other. Ella’s mother went back to school and worked. She did not have the time nor inclination to restrict Ella and her sibling’s technology use. Ella reported her father was more likely to discourage technology use, especially in favor of family time. As a result, she felt conflicted between the two outlooks on technology. Ella felt she was better at texting than talking and that she could be more intentional by having time to think before answering texts. She said she might have a hard time accessing the real world and that her technology use may have been unhealthy, but also declared that older people did not understand technology and that teenagers were building community and becoming educated on social movements. Ella’s conflicted views represented a tension between two different parental approaches to technology, and she alternately resisted and internalized these values in her viewpoints and actions.

Discussion

This study investigated how teenagers understand their relationship to technology, how they describe navigating parental approaches to technology, and their level of confidence with technology and well-being. While gendered attitudes to teenagers’ technology use were evident in the parent sample, no teenage participants used gender as a logic for understanding relationships to technology use. However, since parents wielded control of teenagers’ technology use, these gendered narratives resulted in interventions that disproportionately targeted girls more than boys.

The pandemic magnified the implications of this parental control, which was guided by gendered attitudes and narratives. Boys were more likely to have the confidence to regulate their own technology use and feel more socially connected to peers. Although boys with ADHD and autism diagnoses were more likely to have their video game use limited before the pandemic, parents felt they did not want to fight with their sons, allowing them to self-regulate during the pandemic. Some girls described maintaining social connections. Girls whose parents did not regulate their technology use still collaborated with their parents to regulate their technology use rather than do so independently. These girls were able to enjoy such benefits as finding new hobbies and avoiding gendered bullying. They described faring better than other girls who lacked these connections cultivated online. While parental gendered narratives around technology use were present for both boys and girls, it is possible that the stakes felt higher for parents of daughters. This perception that girls would not be able to handle these dangers independently may explain the disproportionate regulations placed on them.

These attitudes differed from how teenagers described their own technology use during the pandemic. All teenagers in the sample (who were allowed access to it) used social media, and many (especially boys) used video games as effective social virtual spaces to hang out with existing friendship networks. Girls who did not have access to social media were more likely to describe themselves as socially awkward and had trouble accessing their friends. Many voiced negative views of their capabilities and trustworthiness. Girls with parents who revoked or surveilled their technology described these behaviors’ negative impacts. Some reported engaging in behaviors that indicated deep stress. Most did not agree with their parents’ rules, which caused tension in the family. In a pandemic with a mandated lockdown in which schools were closed, curtailing technology use for these teenage girls meant they lacked access to peers altogether. While being off social media may have complicated their social lives or impacted how they saw themselves before the pandemic, they still relied on in-person interactions with peers at school and extracurricular activities. Once they lost access to those physical spaces, virtual spaces provided the only opportunity for peer interaction. Such interaction is vital to all individuals but especially integral to the development of adolescents.

These findings are not meant to draw conclusions about the positive or negative effects of technology use. We cannot make such claims using these data. However, our findings do not support the notion that adolescents whose digital media use is monitored or curtailed fare better. In fact, these teenagers described more negative feelings and less confidence with technology than their peers. This gendered pattern of control over technology use had substantial implications for girls. Especially during the pandemic, the teenagers characterized a lack of access to peer networks via social media as negatively impacting current well-being and social intelligence. Further, we can speculate that these girls may be more likely to struggle socially as they age into young adulthood and have less agency and confidence around technology in the future. This is likely more a reflection of the interactions around technology and parental control than the use of technology itself.

Teenagers understood their parents’ narratives around technology use but did not always agree with them. Boys, especially those in high school, agreed with parental views the least. Boys with developmental diagnoses received messaging that they could not be trusted to self-regulate, similarly to girls in the sample who were monitored or did not have access to technology. However, because there were no tangible parental interventions, these boys still felt they had cultivated the skills to regulate their use of technology. Because we relied on the narratives teenagers and their parents recounted, we are unsure if boys actually developed more skills around self-regulation or were simply more confident about their mastery of technology. Given the conflicting reports given by parents, siblings, and the teenagers themselves, we posit that the primary skill the boys built was confidence itself. It is perhaps true that parents allowed their sons to develop more confidence in general. While not directly observable with this data, we speculate that girls may experience long-term disadvantages in their relationship with technology because they are not typically encouraged to cultivate confidence as a skill.

This study faces two chief limitations. First, our sample purposely targeted two communities in a mostly white middle- and upper-middle-class area. Although there were some interviews with nonwhite and lower-SES participants, we cannot analyze the digital divide nor how these processes play out in other kinds of communities. Second, because they consisted primarily of narratives, our data clarified meaning making and perceptions around parents and teenagers with technology use but cannot assess the accuracy of reported behaviors. Some teenagers and parents reported differing perceptions. Quantitative analysis on parental attitudes and technology use, and further observations, would complement this study.

We make some preliminary recommendations from these findings. We suggest that researchers examine what inequalities the pandemic may have magnified, especially along gendered lines and especially when gender is used as a more implicit logic. We similarly propose that researchers critically investigate the impact of parenting by gender on teenagers’ well-being and confidence in other arenas. We recommend more scholarly attention turn to teenagers’ experiences of technology, especially by collecting data from teenagers themselves. Narratives and media that reflect teenagers' lived practices might help dispel gendered perceptions of digital media use, which may be used to fill an informational vacuum when parents do not understand their teenagers’ technology use. This could lead to more girls playing video games, having virtual spaces additional to social media like video games that welcome them explicitly, and less sexist characterizations of social media. It should be noted that many parents were able to work with their children to successfully navigate video games and social media without monitoring them extensively or limiting access. The data preliminarily support the benefits of adults acting more as role models working with youth rather than trying to enact barriers to youth participation (Itō & Project Muse, 2010). Modeling positive behavior and interactions seemed to be important to many teenagers who felt positively about their friendships and ability to regulate their technology use. Finally, approaches to technological interventions that reflect how teenagers use technology and provide resources for parents that encourage collaboration with their children might improve outcomes and lessen tension within families.