No Kid Is an Island: Privacy Scarcities and Digital Inequalities

Overview: Privacy and Digital Inequalities

The growing body of work on digital inequalities examines fundamental forms of inequality such as race, class, and gender, as well as life chances and well-being across multiple life realms, including but not limited to health, the labor market, and sociality (Robinson et al., 2015). While the body of literature on digital divides and digital inequalities continues to expand, there is agreement that first-order digital inequalities stem from nonexistent or inadequate access to material resources, while second-order digital inequalities are related to gaps (Chen, 2015) in skills, participation, and production. As the literature shows, digital inequalities are deeply connected to larger social inequalities influenced by age (Cotten, 2017), gender (Ono & Zavodny, 2007), race and ethnicity (Mesch, 2016), and economic class (Witte & Mannon, 2010). Linkages also exist between digital inequalities and life chances, including wages (DiMaggio & Bonikowski, 2008), health care (Hale, Cotten, Drentea, & Goldner, 2010), and social support (Rainie & Wellman, 2012).

To shed additional light on digital inequalities and privacy, this article takes as its starting point the research on teens’ use of digital media that assumes a normative model of continuous and constant access to resources (Ito et al., 2009). In this normative model, young people use personal mobile digital devices including smartphones, laptops, and tablets where and when they please. With the exception of parental and educational supervision, resourced youths have unfettered access to their digital devices and activities on their own terms. They are thus able to manage their privacy autonomously on the following levels: unshared or private device use, physical privacy, and privacy in terms of agentic self-disclosure or agency aimed at selectively disclosing their own information.

Employing these resourced young people as a foil, this study examines how privacy must be managed very differently by youths lacking personal digital resources. Youths with little or no resources must confront a range of challenges, from sharing digital devices in the home to seeking all digital resources in third places. Those young people who must share resources in the home experience weakened privacy, as all of their digital encounters are open to the scrutiny of others. For young people sharing resources in the home, constant familial monitoring and observation are typical both in terms of physical privacy and digital footprints left on shared devices. For these young people, physical device use and digital traces must be managed through privacy-seeking strategies at home, including selective self-disclosure to family members.

Using public access points also carries significant privacy costs. Yet youths with insufficient or nonexistent home resources must use them. To do so, they deploy even more costly privacy practices than their better-resourced counterparts. Especially for youths without any personal or familial digital devices, all digital engagements occur in public in the company of others. They can rarely enjoy digital privacy as their resource shortages force them to rely on public places, such as schools and libraries, which make no provision for privacy. Even more damaging, youths dependent on public access points must often engage in virtue signaling to gain access to resources.

Equally important, lacking any physical privacy in their digital engagements, these young people are also stripped of their privacy in another way. To gain access to resources, they must adaptively disclose private information to resource gatekeepers either to signal their worthiness to use scarce digital resources or to obtain dispensation from other obligations, duties, or rules. For these youths, privacy becomes a bargaining chip that they must use with caution. For each time underresourced youths seek to gain access to digital resources, they must weigh the benefits of access to resources against the emotional costs of potentially shaming disclosures. In this way, for these youths lacking resources, privacy and resource acquisition are negotiated processes that require emotional labor.

Privacy as a Right and Resource

How do digital inequalities give rise to privacy practices and resource acquisition? Digital inequalities increasingly influence privacy in terms of access to resources (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001), skills (Hargittai, 2002), behavior (Park, 2013), and policy awareness (Litt, 2013). Despite these rich findings, more research is needed to answer questions at the intersection between privacy and digital inequalities. To meet this need, this article sheds light on an underexamined facet of digital inequality: privacy as a resource. In so doing, this article advances scholarship through examining links between privacy and digital inequality.

Well before the digital age, philosophers, jurists, social scientists, and others gave attention to privacy. Even now, privacy is treated as paramount, crucial to an individual’s identity and essential to healthy societies (Nippert-Eng, 2010). Privacy has a basis in the public–private dichotomy (Lacey, 1993). The public–private dichotomy is known as the “the Grand Dichotomy” (Weintraub & Kumar, 1997) because of its common use in and powerful impacts on many societies (Bobbio, 1989; Béland & Gran, 2008; Mills, 1959). The public-private dichotomy is used to identify sectors, designate responsibilities, and draw boundaries (Gran, 2008). In contemporary society, public usually refers to the state and private typically refers to the market or the household or the individual or nonprofit organization (Sterry, 2017; Rein & Schmähl, 2004). When it comes to responsibilities, the public component is typically considered government. The private component consists of multiple aspects, including the market, family, nonprofit organizations, or individuals. Sometimes, the responsibilities assigned to the public component are owed to all societal members as rights. Private fulfillment of responsibilities, however, is typically based in social relationships (Dobbin, 1992; Fraser, 1997, 2007; Klein, 2003; Okin, 1989; Romany, 1993). Families have responsibilities toward their members because of established social norms (Daatland, Herlofson, & Lima, 2011). Employers have responsibilities toward employees through contracts. While laws and rights do shape relationships on the private side of the public–private dichotomy, it is the public side where rights have power.

The public-private dichotomy is a social tool used to erect boundaries (Thompson, 2011; Benhabib, 1999; Minow, 2003; Thornton, 1991). Access to the public side of the boundary is not restricted. On the public side of the boundary, space is open and shared (Habermas, 1962). Behaviors and social interactions take place “in public.” Because a person is in public, others can observe her or his behavior (Arendt, 1958). Access to the private side is restricted. As a result, an individual or a group on the private side can decide what practices and behaviors are acceptable (Brennan, 2017). The public–private boundary can act as a shield. Because the private side is hidden from public view, individuals may engage in behaviors that they do not want other societal members to observe. This behavior may include harmful actions and omissions (Joseph, 1997; Paterman, 1989).

Public-private boundaries are part of Aristotle’s notion of the state. In Aristotle’s conception, the home is shielded from state intervention (Aristotle, 335 BCE). An important criticism of Aristotle’s notion is its assumption that the state will intervene in domestic matters if a family member’s interests and welfare are harmed (Gobetti, 1997; Pateman, 1989; Romany, 1993). This assumption has led to state structures organized around false expectations about power differences in family homes (Minow, 1990). Public–private boundaries can shield harmful actions in private from public monitoring.

A shield is a key part of the right to privacy as Warren and Brandeis (1890) proposed in their famous article, “The Right to Privacy.” Warren and Brandeis were concerned with ensuring an individual be let alone, what they considered to be a key aspect of a right to privacy (McClain, 1995). In Warren and Brandeis’ analysis, privacy is social. As they note, privacy matters when one person interacts with another person (Global Internet Liberty Campaign, 2017). Rössler (2005) approaches privacy as the ability to control access. In addition to Warren and Brandeis’ focus on physical privacy, Rössler adds three kinds of privacy: spatial, informational, and decisional. To these types of privacy, we add mobility privacy.

Spatial privacy is control over one’s space, including the ability to protect that space from unwanted intrusion (Rössler, 2005). A person’s privacy can be compromised when another person “invades their space.” Through exerting control over her physical environment, a person may control features, such as doors and noise, and instruments, including computers, found in that space. Because some people enjoy greater control over the physical environment than other people, inequalities arise in spatial privacy when it comes to physical environment. If an individual is dissatisfied with physical or space environment, including inability to control that physical environment or space, she may exercise mobility privacy. She may move in an effort to be let alone. Some individuals enjoy great mobility options than others. Some individuals are able to exert privacy through movement, and some individuals cannot. Use of a mobile instrument can permit an individual to exert greater physical privacy and physical privacy. The use of a laptop, tablet, or cell phone can empower this individual to move to a physical environment or space with stronger privacy.

Informational privacy is control over information about ourselves and the ability to protect our information from unwanted access (Rössler, 2005). Most people possess information that they want to “keep private.” Maintaining privacy of this information may be critical as the individual takes steps to make a decision on the basis of that information. A high school student who wants to apply to a college or university may want to control his or her information from unwanted observation. The student may not want another person to know of the grade point average, admission test scores, or what his or her personal essay says. A high school student may not want another person to know to what college or university he or she has applied for admission, and whether he or she is seeking financial assistance to attend. A student may not want another to know of the college or university’s decision to offer admission.

Decisional privacy is control over our own decisions and actions, as well as the ability to prevent unwanted interference with those decisions and actions (Rössler, 2005). Reaching and making a decision in a private manner may reduce emotional work. Emotional work around privacy can consist of receiving, managing, and then acting on “good” and “bad” news. This emotional work can also include protecting one’s hopes and aspirations from public disclosure. If an individual does not control privacy over her information, she may face struggles in making decisions. As a result, her “emotion work” (Hochschild, 1979) may be more extensive and difficult. Faced with the challenges posed by emotion work, this individual may go to great lengths in developing strategies to keeping information private, so she can protect her hopes and aspirations.

Privacy shares characteristics with property. Some people possess a great deal of privacy. They spend time in private settings beyond public purview and government intervention. In these settings, they may possess control over the physical environment and space where they spend time. Some individuals enjoy power to move across circumstances where they can enhance their privacy. Others may enjoy less mobility privacy. A person may enjoy neither physical privacy nor spatial privacy nor mobility privacy. As a result, the person may struggle to control privacy of his or her information from unwanted observation. These problems may not only lead to challenges in exerting decisional privacy; they may also require significantly more emotion work in achieving privacy.

Case Studies, Populations, and Data Collection

This article draws on an original multidimensional data set collected from 2006 to 2013 in two public high schools in the same Californian agricultural community (Robinson, 2014a). The data in this article come from one-on-one and small group interviews with 242 respondents. To ensure that variation is not based on school setting, the data are drawn equally from two high schools that we call “Rancho Benito High” and “Glen Prep” as all names and places are pseudonyms to protect anonymity. While there are important differences between the two schools, students at both schools have a range of motivational levels and economic backgrounds. Concerning academic motivation, the article holds motivation constant by selecting out “strivers” from the larger body of data. “Strivers” are motivated students maintaining scholastic excellence needed for college admission (Robinson, 2014b). Strivers are defined as students who (1) proactively find needed informational resources to meet educational goals; (2) enroll in at least one college preparatory, honors, or AP (advanced placement) class in high school; and (3) plan to attend college after high school graduation.

Regarding economic backgrounds, the larger of the two schools, Rancho Benito High, is a high-poverty, or “Title 1,” school whose enrollment averages more than 2,000 students. At the time of data collection, more than half of the student population qualified for free lunch indicating that a significant number of students are members of low-income families. Latinos comprise more than three quarters of the student population followed by Whites, Asian Americans, and African Americans. While also a public school, Glen Prep High is an important comparison with Rancho Benito High. With well under 1,000 students, Glen Prep’s student population is more economically advantaged and did not qualify for Title 1 status, as far fewer students qualified for free lunch. At Glen Prep, Whites and Latinos made up more than half and almost one-third of the student population, respectively, followed by African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. While the relative proportion of disadvantaged students is different at each school, economically disadvantaged students at both schools are among the 39% of adolescents in the United States who are members of “low-income” families, which include 18% of adolescents living in “poor” families subsisting on less than the federal poverty threshold (Jiang, Granja, & Koball, 2017).

Concerning access to digital resources, students with personal devices account for one third of the students in Rancho Benito and half of students in Glen Prep. Students sharing household resources represent just over half of interviewees at Rancho Benito and just under half of Glen Prep. Students without personal or household resources make up a sixth of interviewees at Rancho Benito and under 5% of Glen Prep. This being said, the data are drawn from a single region of California and do not provide a basis for generalizing to other populations.

As for data collection, at both schools, the interviews were conducted during the normal school day on the school grounds. At Rancho Benito High, because all students must take 4 years of English courses, interviews were conducted in the English Department, with all students enrolled in regular, college-preparatory, honors, and/or AP courses. There was no selection process including or excluding some students from taking part in the interviews. At Glen Prep, interviews were conducted with a cohort of students from regular, college-prep, honors, and AP courses. In both schools, all students were asked to answer the same questions. While students were not required to answer every question, each interviewee was given the opportunity to answer every question. In both schools, informed consent documentation was circulated in advance to students and parents so that they could opt out if they chose not to participate or allow their children to participate. Only one student chose to opt out.

Methods: Interviews Using Iterated Questioning Approach

Interviews were conducted in conjunction with the first author’s ethnographic fieldwork (Robinson & Schulz, 2013). These interviews proved well-tailored to uncovering emotion management-– related privacy practices and negotiated disclosure (Pugh, 2013). The goal of “discovery-oriented” analysis (Luker, 2008) was privileged over the testing of hypotheses regarding cause-effect relationships among prespecified factors. The interview questions providing the data for this article covered the following topics: (1) access to digital resources at home, school, and third places; (2) use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) for education, learning, and schoolwork; (3) educational trajectories and courses taken; (4) future education goals; (5) experiences with college admission, scholarship, and financial aid applications; and (6) emotions and experiences surrounding disclosure of private information.

The interview questions regarding these topics were formulated using the iterated questioning approach (IQA; Robinson & Schulz, 2016). After asking background questions, IQA’s four key steps were employed. These four steps allow the interviewer to first elicit public or frontstage narratives in Steps 1 and 2, as well as private or backstage narratives in Steps 3 and 4. Using the four steps, interviewees were first asked about frontstage talk calibrated for public consumption about striving activities, including college, scholarship, and financial aid applications, as well as the notifications and outcomes of these applications. In the first step, questions were asked about striving activities and negotiating access to digital resources to establish baseline-iterated questions about the nuts and bolts of using digital resources for college, scholarship, and financial aid applications. In the second step of IQA, interviewees shared frontstage narratives regarding both of these activities to produce talk requiring little or no disclosure of private information.

Subsequently, the same students went behind the curtain of privacy thanks to IQA where they produced backstage talk about emotions associated with striving activities for private audiences. In Steps 3 and 4 of IQA, interviewees shared backstage narratives about the emotional costs ensuing from privacy practices necessary for striving activities. Their backstage talk revealed how they managed their private struggles to adaptively disclose private information to resource gatekeepers. In addition to providing both frontstage and backstage data about striving activities, the IQA method also facilitated the coding of the data by delivering readily classifiable forms of talk that corresponded to frontstage and backstage self-presentations. The sequencing of questions in the four steps produced comparable data by systematically evoking talk on privacy and emotional costs.

Analysis: Private, Personalized, and Password Protected

With the exception of parental supervision, resourced strivers have at will use of personal mobile digital devices including smartphones, laptops, and tablets in their homes. Thanks to this abundance of resources, they can choose to be alone and unobserved during their digital engagements, as well as to exercise mobility privacy. As Theo explains, “If I want to be alone on my phone I go to my room.” For Clara, “We have a good signal pretty much anywhere so not a problem if I need some space—just take my laptop and get some alone time.” Esmerelda explains, “We have a no noise zone in the study so you can take your iPad in there to get peace and quiet to get work done.” For these resourced youths, physical privacy while using digital devices is a normative condition thanks to wireless Internet, personal use digital devices, and larger middle-class homes that provide physical space. All of these resources contribute to agentic control over physical privacy for both mundane and significant digital engagements.

While physical privacy may not be necessary for lower-stakes digital tasks, it can be of utmost importance for more sensitive undertakings. These youths describe emotionally laden tasks that are facilitated by physical privacy such as applying to college and ultimately reading all-important electronic communications about scholarships and college admissions. When these resourced strivers need to be alone or unobserved, they have the autonomy to do so. Cynthia describes privacy as a physical need to manage her emotions when applying to her dream school: “I really had my heart set on UCLA so I was mega stressed doing the app . . . I needed to be alone so that I could like let myself breathe . . .” Randal describes the emotional rollercoaster of the all-important college decision notification: “When you get that email telling you to check the [admissions] portal . . . like your heart starts pounding . . . if it’s bad news you seriously want to get it alone.” In each of these cases, the relative ease with which these strivers may use their digital devices unobserved becomes a form of digital privilege for sensitive tasks. Particularly when facilitated and respected by parents, physical and spatial privacy can reduce stress and enhance emotional well-being when dealing with high-stakes digital tasks related to college admissions and financing.

Further, in addition to physical privacy, resourced strivers’ privacy is not compromised by device sharing. They enjoy informational privacy, as Enzo explains, “My phone and laptop are password protected.” For Julie, “My mom or dad might ask me what I’m doing . . . but no one sees anything I do since it’s my MacBook.” Resourced strivers benefit from high levels of familial trust to husband their resources such that they do not need to explain digital engagements that might be observed by others sharing their devices. Knowing that no one else can see what they are doing liberates them from others’ judgments. Noberto describes the college application process as “totally nerve-wracking . . . you really want to know ‘am I good enough’ . . . kind of embarrassing but I spent endless hours comparing myself to freshman at my reach schools and safety schools . . . trying to guess if I’d get in . . .” Bethany explains trying to conceal her “OCD” [obsessive–compulsive disorder] behavior during her agonizing wait for college admissions decisions:

Everyone else was getting decisions and I hadn’t heard . . . so I kept checking the portal . . . I didn’t want anyone to know—I mean I knew I was being totally OCD but couldn’t stop—so I pretended to be checking Facebook.

Knowing that their digital engagements are unmonitored, these resourced strivers benefit from both digital and physical privacy, particularly valuable in these high-stake activities.

Finally, thanks to the privacy afforded by personal space and personal devices, resourced strivers have the power to autonomously disclose private information. They enjoy decisional privacy, as Joelle explains how she chose to disclose good news: “When I got my scholarship I was totally psyched! The first thing I did was text my boyfriend—then I ran to the kitchen to tell my family!” By that same token, when potentially bad news arrives, these strivers may choose when and with whom to share this information. Alex explains how only checking email at home alone with his personal password protected device kept him from feeling shamed:

Lucky for me I had already gotten accepted at my fallback [school] . . . and posted it . . . so when I was like rejected I just kept it quiet . . . it was like no shame in my game ‘cause no one knew.

Sal describes a cautionary tale about opening a scholarship rejection email:

. . . sucked with my dad practically looking over my shoulder and feeling bad for me . . . much worse than just feeling bad for yourself . . . never open anything important with a parental hovering within eyeball distance . . . better to go to my room and process it alone.

By managing their digital communications in private and selectively disclosing good news, these resourced strivers can forestall potential negative emotions including embarrassment and shame. In sum, resourced strivers enjoy significant spatial, informational, decisional, and mobility privacy.

Shared Devices in Communal Household Spaces

Strivers who lack personal digital devices must share household digital devices that are consumed collectively rather than individually. Under these resource-restricted conditions, privacy must be managed very differently. Marcia shares, “. . . let me count . . . there are about eight of us who need the computer: my mom, my dad, me, my two sisters, my three brothers, and sometimes my cousins . . .” Many of the strivers relying on household resources report sharing a single desktop computer in the living room or parents’ room, as Josh confides. “The computer is in my mom’s bedroom so I can’t use it whenever I want.” For Bella, “Having my own laptop and my own room is like a fantasy! I’m lucky if I get the laptop on the [living room] couch without someone horning in or the TV on full blast.” Joseph recounts, “I share a bedroom with my brothers so even if I get the [family] laptop I’m not going to be alone to use it.” Unlike resourced strivers, strivers sharing household resources cannot retreat to the privacy of an individual bedroom with a personal digital device. They are constantly in someone else’s space, subjected to noise and prying eyes. They do not enjoy spatial privacy tout court.

When these strivers undertake sensitive undertakings to chart their futures, smaller living spaces and shared devices result in emotionally laden challenges. Joaquim explains how he used the family computer in the living room to type up a scholarship application:

I told them [family] to be quiet but they acted all exaggerated and made a big deal about “ok I’m being quiet now” but they didn’t shut up for more than five minutes . . . then they started talking again and making noise . . . like dude suck it up—the world doesn’t stop for you.

For Tony, asking his family to be quiet only made things worse: “. . . asking them to please keep it down just made them nosier about what I was doing and asking me why it was ‘sooo important’ . . .” As Bethany explains, even with families with the best intentions, using the family computer for college applications can be an exercise in frustration:

They [family] tried so hard to leave me alone but there was always noise from someone cooking or doing the laundry or watching the TV . . . even with the volume on mute I could still see the screen and there it was flickering . . . it made me want to cry ‘cause I just wanted to concentrate but my dad was tiptoeing around to not make any noise.

Furthermore, when struggling strivers suffer from lack of physical privacy, tensions ensue on two levels that make their emotional burdens heavier. In addition to outwardly directed frustrations over lack of privacy, there are also internal conflicts necessitating what Hochschild calls “suppressive work” to self-police emotions, suppress emotions perceived as negative, and render the expression of emotions acceptable to selves and others. As Hochschild (1979) analyzes, “The individual often works on inducing or inhibiting feelings so as to render them ‘appropriate’ to a situation” (p. 552) and “the ways people try to manage feeling . . . capable of assessing when a feeling is ‘inappropriate,’ and capable of trying to manage feeling” (p. 557). Raoul describes,

. . . it bites applying for scholarships because everything rides on it . . . and you have to do them online . . . I was stressin’ and took control of the computer . . . told my brother “don’t even think about touching it—you’ll do something dumb and erase my files” . . . later when I got my head out of my behind I felt like such as jerk . . .

Stephanie reported a similar experience filling out the common application: “I snapped at my little sister to ‘just leave me be’ . . . then I was like I’m being such a cow because it wasn’t her fault that we have to share.” Here we see that problems with spatial privacy lead Raoul and Stephanie to suppress emotions they perceive to be negative and to attempt to manage their emotions in order to avoid being “jerks” and “cows.”

Other tensions ensue from digital engagements that can leave digital footprints or that may be observed by others. For Christian, failing to log out of his email revealed private aspirations he had not chosen to share with to his brother: “So like I had to use the bathroom and could have sworn that I logged off my email but no . . . gone for 60 seconds and my brother opens it and is like ‘dude I didn’t know you applied to Chico . . . and I’m like ‘yeah cause I didn’t want you to know.’” Amber describes her snooping aunt reading the bookmarks on her browser:

So like I applied to a private school kinda hoping for a scholarship . . . my auntie came over to use the computer and was like going through my bookmarks and was like “your parents can’t afford this, what are you thinking?” She totally guilted me out . . . made me feel terrible like I was bad for dreaming too big.

Christian and Amber do not possess strong informational privacy. These strivers encounter an array of potentially shaming situations when their digital footprints reveal their private hopes and aspirations they would like to keep away from prying eyes.

For all of these reasons, when strivers share household resources, their privacy strategies are limited in scope and efficacy. Many share Oscar’s strategy of off-peak use: “It was so hard doing college apps ‘cause the only time I have the computer alone is late at night when everyone else has gone to bed or at the crack of dawn before everyone wakes up.” Others keep everything on a USB drive in the attempt of safeguarding privacy. Veronica reports,

My thumbdrive has my life on it ever since I caught my sister going through my files [on the computer] . . . one time I thought I had lost it [drive] and was totally panicked and couldn’t work on my apps for like a week until it resurfaced . . .

For many of the strivers sharing household resources, there are difficult choices rather than good solutions. They encounter challenges to maintaining decisional privacy, as Alicia relates,

One of my besties told me she got in to Fresno and was like “go check to see if you got in too” so I sat around like I was watching TV and waited and waited and was just like “leave, please leave” so that I could dash on the computer and check the portal alone . . . I was almost there when my mom came into the room and said “any news you want to share?” . . . then it became a family event . . .

In sum, strivers sharing household resources report making tough choices about opening themselves up to familial scrutiny and devising privacy strategies to escape familial monitoring with varying levels of success.

Public Spaces and the Public Gaze

When strivers use public access points, these venues offer no personal privacy. This constraint is most serious for those strivers without any kind of home Internet access or mobile devices who must rely on public digital resources. These young people do not enjoy spatial or mobility privacy. Many of these strivers without home resources rely on school computers, which are both heavily monitored and in high demand as Mario relates,

I try to go to the school lab at lunch but there aren’t always enough spaces so before school is better . . . Mrs. Delaney is always there to make sure people aren’t goofing off . . . she can see your screen from the back of room and will shut you down if you are messing around.

When using resources at the library, Marcia is also constantly aware that her digital engagements are observable by others: “. . . in the library everyone can see what you are doing . . . the screens are close together and people are always walking behind you . . . and people in line waiting watch what you’re doing.” Marcia and other strivers without home resources experience compromises of their informational and decisional privacy.

Not only are the strivers’ screens viewable by others, but they are also constantly subject to physical distractions when engaged in capital-enhancing activities. Joey recounts feeling thwarted,

I was at the library trying to get my essay done . . . all these people were walking behind me so I kept moving my chair . . . couldn’t keep my thoughts straight ‘cause every time I’d get into it someone would bump into me or ask to get by me.

Ana explains,

I had a big scholarship due so I went to the lab to get it done . . . every time I got in the zone this nasty guy next to me would wreck it by wiping his nose on his sleeve or picking his nose . . . just couldn’t concentrate with that grossness going on next to me. Yuck!

The public visibility of their screens, and thus their digital engagements, in shared physical space makes privacy impossible. This imposes a heavy emotional burden especially when they undertake sensitive tasks.

Equally important, these strivers must suppress negative emotions to keep on task because they have no other viable options. Melinda explains,

The only place I can go is the lab at school . . . one time I was totally working on my stuff and these guys next to me kept looking at stuff they shouldn’t so Mrs. Delaney kicked them out . . . but it was a total scene and she made some comment about keeping an eye on the rest of us . . . I was kind of shaky but I had to try to just to calm down and keep working to meet my deadline.

For Bill, “I had to fill out my FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid] . . . these a-holes came in and starting making comments like ‘oh gonna break the bank with that one?’ . . . I couldn’t come back because of work so I had to play it off . . . but I was pissed.” For Marcia, “Yeah this person next to me kept looking at the schools I was looking at and like it’s not hard enough without someone judging me and making unhelpful comments like ‘rich kids’ . . . I was like mind your own beeswax.” Strivers using public access points are subject to multiple burdens invisible to their better-resourced counterparts that use up time and emotional energy that are already in short supply.

In addition to lacking any physical privacy in their digital engagements, these strivers must also engage self-disclosure of private information to obtain resources from gatekeepers. They report having to reveal potentially embarrassing information to gatekeepers. These disclosures concern resource shortages such as not having the Internet at home and not having money for printing cartridges, as well as private information about their family’s financial troubles—all of which can expose poverty to public view. For Manuel,

. . . they only let you scan your library card to use the machines three times . . . it took way longer and I wasn’t done . . . in front of everyone in line I had to beg the librarian to give me special permission . . . she said ok since it was for my [college] apps and I was gonna miss the deadline.

Anouchka explains disclosing private information to signal her worthiness in order to obtain dispensation from class to go to the computer lab:

I had to ask Mrs. Fenwick to go to the lab to print my stuff . . . we were in front of the class so I tried to speak real quiet and she started asking me questions about what I was going to do . . . when she found out it was for the scholarship and how I don’t have a printer at home she let me go . . . but I got so upset ‘cause I didn’t want anyone to know . . . thought I was going to cry in front of everyone . . .

Paula explains how she had to risk potential shaming in order to fill out the online FAFSA:

I had to go to the career center to ask Mrs. Stein for help to fill out these questions on the Internet . . . I didn’t know how to do it . . . made me feel like crap when I had to ask her questions with other students there . . . it was so embarrassing . . . seemed like I was saying my family wasn’t good enough or something because they don’t earn enough money . . . made me almost not want to try to go to a four-year but Mrs. Stein was real nice and got me through it.

While gatekeepers can be benevolent, disclosure of personal information must be weighed against the emotional costs of potentially shaming disclosures. With no other options, strivers reliant on public access points do the most emotion work and bear the burden of adaptive disclosure of private information to gain resources.

Synthesis, Conclusions, and Implications

As the analysis has shown, strivers with resources enjoy unfettered private and personalized digital device use that fosters mobility, spatial, informational, and decisional privacies. Such resources are particularly important for capital-enhancing activities such as applications for college, financial aid, and scholarships. Enjoying the advantages of continuous access to personal digital devices and private physical spaces in the home, members of this group have the agency to ensure their physical privacy, evade unwanted monitoring of digital information and engagements, and autonomously disclose private information and make other decisions.

Strivers with resources act as an important foil against which to compare two other groups of youths that must complete the same tasks while facing different privacy challenges: (1) strivers who must share household digital resources and (2) strivers who only have access to public digital resources. Regarding strivers who share household digital resources, members of this group rely on communal digital devices and communal home spaces. As a result of resource sharing, they experience far less autonomy in their privacy management for two reasons. First, given the scarcity of both personal physical space and portable personal devices, they are easily monitored by others. Second, their digital footprints can be observed by those with whom they share devices.

Concerning the third group of strivers, these youths have almost no mobility, spatial, informational, and decisional privacies, as they rely on public digital resources. Lacking any digital devices in the home, they face far greater challenges with fewer resources than either of the other two groups of strivers. Because their use of digital devices takes place in public venues, it often necessitates negotiation with gatekeepers. To gain access in public settings, these strivers must sometimes reveal potentially shaming private information to persuade gatekeepers to grant them access to resources. In this way, although all three sets of strivers must do emotion work and manage disclosure of private information, this last group must also bear the burden of adaptive disclosure of private information.

This article’s findings demonstrate that, for these young people, privacy is intimately linked to resources. Although all young people are legally entitled to the same privacy rights, these rights are not equally realized. When it comes to the digital domain, resourced young people enjoy greater ability to exercise their privacy rights than their disadvantaged counterparts. This article demonstrates that strivers whose families possess significant resources, including digital resources and private spaces, enjoy multiple forms of privacy as normative. Their unfettered access to their personal digital devices allows them to manage their privacy with autonomy in multiple locations within the household, as well as to achieve mobility privacy. The household’s privacy permits their exercise of digital privacy, a resource they are not forced to share with other family members. In sum, young people who enjoy abundant and autonomous resources can fully realize their rights to privacy. Resources allow them to exercise privacy rights that confer numerous benefits and privileges as normative conditions without attendant emotional costs.

By contrast, as we have seen, young people lacking physical or spatial privacy struggle to achieve privacy in the digital domain as well. These young people do not possess digital autonomy to access and control their private information without conceding other aspects of their privacy. In stark contrast to resourced students, those with fewer resources cannot fully realize their privacy rights because they must often sacrifice different forms of privacy to access digital resources. They are subject to surveillance both in the home due to shared devices and space, as well as outside of the home when they are in the glare of the public gaze. In either case, they must make difficult tradeoffs that require emotional labor. As the analysis has shown, these dilemmas can carry heavy emotional costs. While we have discussed strivers in this article who pushed through the challenges at great personal cost, their story is not the only one. For other students, these emotional costs are simply too high. Indeed, the data revealed a small number of revealing cases in which students reported feeling so shamed and daunted by filling out the FAFSA in public that they gave up completing the form online. Because they did not apply for financial aid, these students were forced to attend the local community college despite being accepted to four-year schools. This finding suggests that future research is needed into the far-reaching consequences of unequal privacy, emotional costs, and digital inequalities.

In conclusion, this analysis reveals a vicious cycle in which young people lacking economic resources also experience constraints on their privacy. At a critical life stage, these shortages can shape behaviors in ways that narrow options and potentially even limit future achievement. Finally, in establishing these linkages, this article makes an important contribution by revealing privacy scarcity as another facet of digital inequality. The article brings to light the invisible privacy management strategies and emotion work necessary for individuals lacking digital resources. By revealing these connections, the research makes clear the unexpected consequences of resource inequalities, as well as their implications for digital exclusion.