The influences of computer gameplay and social media use on computer science identity and computer science career interests

•We applied linear regression analysis to predict CS identity and multinomial regression analysis to predict CS career interest.•We estimated that female students have the same CS identity as male students if they played 5 more hours of computer games daily or spent 5 h less on social media than the male students.•We found that computer gameplay was positively associated with CS career interest for both genders, but this association was stronger for male students than for female students.•Interestingly, additional hours of social media use were found to be associated with a decrease in CS career interest for male students, but an increase for female students.