Class and Gender Impact Youth Internet Use

According to the article, "Class and Gender Impact Youth Internet Use," it was reported that "among children of educated parents 67 percent use the internet at least once a week, while only 25 perfect of children whose parents are less educated used the internet daily."

A great way to understand that statistic would be to first understand what privilege is. Privilege can be defined as, according to an online dictionary, "a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantage of most." Now, to understand that a bit further, one must be aware of white privilege, which can be defined as "a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of color experience," according to Wikipedia.

To explain the skew in the statistic stated above, one must first take into account the differences in education, which basically comes down to socioeconomic status, which determines who is able to attend college and who is not. Those who are able to seek higher education earn college degrees, which in turn allow those college educated individuals to, more than likely, earn more than what a high school diploma will pay.

Those with a higher socioeconomic status are able to afford a computer, or maybe multiple, or get the computer fixed if something were to malfunction. Those with a lower socioeconomic status, those who did, and were not, able to attend some sort of higher education, may not be able to afford a computer, thus reflecting the gap in percentages of computer use.

Also, the majority of the time, those with lower socioeconomic statuses are people of color; those in the minority, which brings us back to the topic of white privilege.

The different types of feminism that address topics like these are multiracial/multiethnic feminism and socialist feminism. The contributions of of both multiracial and socialist feminism are the concept of intersectionality - the combined effects of racial ethnic, social class, and gender social statuses in producing a matrix of domination.

For more information regarding feminism and the different types, please visit this website.