The digital divide – and its effect on reading – is often framed as a question of access. Those with fewer resources have fewer devices and less bandwidth. Those with more resources have more technology. It sounds simple.
Too simple. And it ignores a common mistake in how we think about inequality called Gap Thinking. Further, it reduces it to what people have rather than what they do.
A recent German study by Heinz and colleagues on reading interventions in primary education challenges that picture. In this sample, families without a university-educated parent did not have fewer digital devices. In some cases, they even had more of certain types, such as smartphones with internet access.
So the classic first-level digital divide, access, is not as straightforward as we often assume.
Then comes the second part of the story.
When the researchers looked at reading outcomes, it was not device ownership that mattered most, but usage. Students with higher levels of digital media consumption showed lower baseline reading performance. This does not imply causality. More screen time does not automatically reduce reading ability. But the pattern is consistent enough to deserve attention.
This raises an uncomfortable question. Perhaps today’s digital divide is less about having technology and more about how that technology is embedded in everyday routines.
Devices can open access to information, but they can also create environments of fragmented attention, rapid stimulation and superficial processing. This is not a moral judgement about screens. It is a cognitive observation. Deep reading requires sustained attention, effort and concentration. These are not always the skills that are reinforced in many digital contexts.
Interestingly, the study also found that students who use digital media extensively at home do not automatically benefit more from digital reading interventions at school. Familiarity with digital tools does not translate into learning gains.
Digital familiarity is not the same as digital learning competence.
This complicates the debate on digitalisation in education. The question is not simply whether we need more or less technology. The real question is what we do with it. And perhaps even more importantly, who guides that use and for what purpose.