Digital Dating Divides: How Technology Use Shapes Sex and Singlehood in the Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: 30269 - Inequality in the Transition to Adulthood

Abstract

Today’s young adults are developing intimate relationships within increasingly digitalized contexts. Yet, despite growing evidence of a decline in sexual frequency and rise in singlehood, we know less about how digital technologies are shaping young adults’ intimate relationships over time. Using data from the Transition to Adulthood Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—a longitudinal study of young adults ages 18 to 28—methods of Latent Class Analysis are used to identify patterns, or latent classes, of technology use in 2017 and consider how class membership is associated with young adult’s sexual frequency and singlehood in 2019. Results reveal three underlying latent classes of technology use: High Social Users, Digital Workers, and Less Digitally Engaged. Results also reveal a gender paradox of digital engagement. Although women are overrepresented among the High Social Users— the most socially connected class—it is young men who see returns to their social digital engagement. Specifically, young men in the High Social Users class report greater sexual frequency and are less likely to be single than their Less Digitally Engaged counterparts, net of sociodemographic characteristics and social contexts. Women, however, do not see the same intimate returns to their technology use. Considering that young adult’s intimate relationships have grown increasingly diverse in recent decades, this study offers new insight into the role of​ ​digital technologies in shaping variations in sex and singlehood in the transition to adulthood.

Author

• MacKenzie Christensen, University of Oregon