ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1601240
Inequalities in digital literacy: Exploring the disparity in tangible outcomes of internet use among college students in China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, Beijing, China
- 2Beihang University, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In the age of digitization, digital literacy plays a crucial role in ensuring that college students thrive in an increasingly digital world. While many studies have examined disparities in digital literacy focusing on access and skills, there is still a research gap concerning the tangible benefits college students derive from internet use. Using an internet outcome framework, our study scrutinizes the potential disparities in benefits derived from internet use among college students from varied social backgrounds in China. Through an online survey of 463 participants, we found that students from a higher socio-economic status generally obtain more benefits from internet usage. Interestingly, female students appear to capitalize on certain advantages more than their male counterparts. These findings indicate that online experiences might amplify offline inequalities, suggesting that the internet could produce varied outcomes based on the student's background.
Keywords: Inequalities, Digital Literacy, college students, Internet outcomes, Female students
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fang and Nie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chen Nie, Beihang University, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.