Digital leisure and unexpectedly smaller socioeconomic achievement gaps across 47 countries
Abstract
Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in education, but their associations with student achievement may depend on how students use them and on their socioeconomic background. Using PISA 2022 data from 347,532 students across 47 countries, we examined different dimensions of digital technology use and perceived capability in relation to mathematics, reading, and science achievement and tested whether these associations varied with socioeconomic status (SES). Perceived digital capability was positively associated with achievement across all three domains, whereas digital technology use at school showed little average association with achievement. Leisure-related digital use showed the largest negative association. Socioeconomic moderation was generally modest, with one striking exception: the negative association between leisure-related digital use and achievement became substantially stronger as SES increased, a pattern observed in all 47 countries across all three achievement domains. Consequently, higher leisure-related digital use corresponded to smaller socioeconomic differences in achievement because achievement was lower among more advantaged students, rather than higher among disadvantaged students. These findings demonstrate that different dimensions of digital technology use and perceived capability show substantially different associations with achievement and highlight that evaluations of educational digitalization should consider both overall achievement levels and socioeconomic disparities, as changes in inequality can arise through very different underlying achievement patterns.
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BibTeX
@misc{spitzer2026digital,
title = {{Digital leisure and unexpectedly smaller socioeconomic achievement gaps across 47 countries}},
author = {Markus Spitzer and Sebastian Röhl and Henry Laurisch and Eileen Richter and Korbinian Moeller},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/nxwje_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nxwje_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Digital leisure and unexpectedly smaller socioeconomic achievement gaps across 47 countries
AU - Markus Spitzer
AU - Sebastian Röhl
AU - Henry Laurisch
AU - Eileen Richter
AU - Korbinian Moeller
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/07
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/nxwje_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nxwje_v1/
AB - Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in education, but their associations with student achievement may depend on how students use them and on their socioeconomic background. Using PISA 2022 data from 347,532 students across 47 countries, we examined different dimensions of digital technology use and perceived capability in relation to mathematics, reading, and science achievement and tested whether these associations varied with socioeconomic status (SES). Perceived digital capability was positively associated with achievement across all three domains, whereas digital technology use at school showed little average association with achievement. Leisure-related digital use showed the largest negative association. Socioeconomic moderation was generally modest, with one striking exception: the negative association between leisure-related digital use and achievement became substantially stronger as SES increased, a pattern observed in all 47 countries across all three achievement domains. Consequently, higher leisure-related digital use corresponded to smaller socioeconomic differences in achievement because achievement was lower among more advantaged students, rather than higher among disadvantaged students. These findings demonstrate that different dimensions of digital technology use and perceived capability show substantially different associations with achievement and highlight that evaluations of educational digitalization should consider both overall achievement levels and socioeconomic disparities, as changes in inequality can arise through very different underlying achievement patterns.
ER -