Social technologies and major life transitions / events
Each person faces many transitions throughout their life as they develop, age, and change. Yet people often find it difficult to manage where and how to present and discuss life transitions and changing identities on social media sites, and to find communities of similar others. These difficulties are often amplified for those with marginalized or stigmatized identities (e.g., transgender and other LGBQ people, first generation and low-income college students). This line of research addresses these concerns via a wide range of methods. We seek to explain how people fragment their identities and networks among separate social media sites during major life transitions, and the social inequities that exist for people with marginalized identities, particularly those with multiple intersecting marginalized identities, during major life transitions (among other outcomes).