To find out more about the digital divide in the European context, Cruz-Jesus and colleagues (2016) designed an exploratory study using factor analysis. The main aims of the study included unveiling nations’ access to digital utilities such as education, health care, banking, etc. The authors first calculated an aggregated score of the general ICT adoption of individuals per EU member country. Then, weighing in educational attainment, the aggregated values of each country were divided into three subcategories: low, medium, and high educational attainment. Put next to the aggregated scores, it was discovered that educational attainment and the digital divide clearly correlated, the lower an individual’s educational attainment was, the stronger they experienced the digital divide (Cruz-Jesus et al., 2016). Aggregated averages proved to be highly unreliable to reflect the complexity of the digital divide experienced by people with different educational attainment, and as such, a connection could be observed between lower educational attainment and lower digital skills. Since the digital divide is sometimes also conceptualised as the “differences between those who take advantage of and use technology to acquire new knowledge or develop specific competencies, and those who do not have this competence” (Kelentrić et al., 2017, p. 13), to proactively hinder its occurrence, a more effective bottom-up approach should be sought in ICT inclusive education, focusing on the importance of early inclusion.

The complexity of the digital divide might also be illustrated by reflecting on 1) technology investment, 2) digital device ownership and 3) technology use in the classrooms. Incredibly high sums of money are invested in equipping schools or teachers and learners with digital devices without prior technological and technological pedagogical training opportunities (Hismanoglu, 2012b; McKeznie, 2001; Russell et al., 2003; Quin & Shuo, 2011). These enormous investments are made in hope that the presence of the devices would prove to be enough to trigger change. In alignment with this, country reports on how successfully technology is integrated in the classrooms tends to centre around internet speed, internet access and device ownership ratios (e.g., EU, 2019). These factors; however, repeatedly prove to be unreliable to predict what these devices are used for and how effective their use is in teaching and learning contexts (Cruz-Jesus et al., 2016; Fekete, 2020b; Quin & Shuo, 2011), highlighting that the presence of technology in itself does not guarantee more successful student learning (Lei & Zhao, 2007).

When discussing the digital divide, a distinction should be made between 1) using ICT devices as a teaching tool or 2) to teach through technology (Quin & Shuo, 2011). The former concerns using technology to, e.g., design learning materials, edit documents or photocopy handouts, while the latter means integrating technology into the learning environment. Seemingly, “ICT-integrated English teaching is at a point between ICT-as-a-tool phase and ICT-as-an-environment phase” (Quin & Shuo, 2011, p. 115). This dichotomy might be overcome by focusing on developments targeting teacher education and training, and thus reducing the digital divide (Quin & Shuo, 2011). Technical skills training in isolation (e.g., how to operate computers) have little to no effect on developing one’s technological pedagogical skills (ICTLP, 2007), and from the learners’ perspective, the digital divide is further complicated by correlations between poor general numeracy, reading and problem-solving skills and technology use (ICTLP, 2007).