Conversations about digital inequality in education often revolve around access to technology. However, research into youth culture has shown that many Black and Latinx teens are able to access technology and have developed the same digital skills as their white peers. Social scientist Matt Rafalow observed three California middle schools where students had similar levels of access to digital technologies despite being from different racial and class backgrounds and found that teachers perceived students’ technological abilities differently. Wealthy white students’ digital play was seen as essential to learning, while Asian American and Latinx students’ skills were seen as either a threat to their learning or irrelevant to it. Addressing digital inequality will require schools to also address the racial and class prejudice that leads teachers to view students’ abilities differently.

关于教育中的数字不平等的讨论通常围绕着技术的获取。但是，对青年文化的研究表明，许多黑人和拉丁裔青少年能够使用技术，并且发展出与白人相同的数字技能。社会科学家马特·拉法洛（Matt Rafalow）观察了加利福尼亚的三所中学，尽管他们来自不同的种族和班级背景，但学生获得数字技术的水平相近，并且发现教师对学生的技术能力有不同的看法。富裕的白人学生的数字游戏被认为是学习必不可少的，而亚裔和拉丁裔学生的技能则被视为对他们学习的威胁或与学习无关。。