For a long time, how well children and young people can use computers and how safe they are on the Internet was of secondary importance in school lessons. Corona has fundamentally changed that. When entire schools are closed, but also when individual classes or students have to study at home, what researchers call “digital literacy” also determines access to education. But this competence, according to a new study by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (RWI), varies greatly among children and young people – and is more dependent than one might think on their parents.
The researchers at RWI evaluated data from the so-called National Education Panel (NEPS), a long-term study on educational issues. According to this, children of unemployed parents already show significantly lower digital skills in the 6th grade than children of whom at least one parent works. These differences become larger with age.
The “digital divide” is created early
A comparison of children and young people with and without a migration background also reveals such a “digital divide”. “Equal participation in distance learning” is hardly possible for these groups, warns RWI researcher Friederike Hertweck – regardless of whether laptops or computers are available. “Politics,” Hertweck demands, “should intensify the development of digital skills from the fifth grade at the latest.”
From the researchers’ point of view, however, it is not only the social differences that suggest that schools should concentrate more on teaching digital skills than has been the case up to now. Their results also show that girls and boys in the 6th to 9th grade do not show any differences in this area. But after that – as the numbers already show in the 12th grade – the genders diverge. In adulthood, women consistently have lower digital skills than men. Against the background of the shortage of skilled workers and the low proportion of women in technical professions, the researchers call for more support for girls in school.