We explore a new form of social exclusion, digital inequality, that gives rise to unequal life chances among youths beginning their educational and occupational careers. Examining youth about to enter the workforce or begin their postsecondary educational trajectories, we analyze unemployment and precarious life chances among economically disadvantaged youth in light of access to informational resources and information seeking skills. Paying attention to the kinds of internet use characteristic of economically advantaged versus disadvantaged youth, we probe how youth from varied economic backgrounds look for work and/or postsecondary education to pursue training suited to their fields of choice. Underlying our study is the assumption that informational resources and skills linked to the emergent Information Age are increasingly consequential for life chances. Our inquiry pinpoints several inter-related levels of exclusion. Material and skills access to informational resources are normative for economically privileged youth who are constantly wired and interconnected by new media. For economically privileged youth, new media resources play pivotal roles in both information and job seeking, allowing them to participate in a variety of mediated social networks. By contrast, informationally excluded youth lacking access to these informational resources encounter multiple disadvantages that make them fall further behind. Rather than using new media to look for work, apply for jobs, or interact with potential employers, they must rely on their offline social networks. As these offline networks are less useful to employment success, informationally excluded youth are doubly disadvantaged with regard to their job seeking activities and social participation.
