Since the introduction of digital media the fear of women being left out of the virtual world is expressed in various contexts. With the aim to establish if these gender differences still exist and, if they do, what form they take this paper investigates the use of digital media by male and female higher education students. 1,327 students enrolled at German higher education institutions completed an online questionnaire concerning the digital devices that they own or have access to, and their usage of media and e-learning tools and services for their learning. Using multivariate analysis, the study indicates that male students show higher acceptance values for more general web tools higher than female students, but when it comes to e-learning related tools women show higher acceptance values for a lot more different tools and services than men. The findings indicate that differences in media usage patterns between male and female students are not a question of having access, but of the attitude toward and the reasons for using digital media, and that the mentioned fear of women being left out did not come true.

中文翻译：

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男孩用的玩具，女孩用的工具？高等教育中的性别和媒体使用方式

自从引入数字媒体以来，在各种情况下都表达了对女性被排除在虚拟世界之外的恐惧。为了确定这些性别差异是否仍然存在，以及它们是否存在，他们采取什么形式来调查男女高等教育学生对数字媒体的使用。在德国高等学校就读的1,327名学生完成了有关他们拥有或可以使用的数字设备以及其使用的媒体和电子学习工具及服务的在线问卷。使用多变量分析，研究表明，男生对更高的通用网络工具的接受价值高于女学生，但在与电子学习相关的工具方面，女性对更高的接受价值则比男性更多。