What do we mean by digital equality in education? Toward five conceptual lenses based on a systematic review

The concept of digital equality has appeared prevalent in education policy and discourse, yet its meaning often remains vague. This paper systematically reviewed how digital equality has been defined in 74 educational studies published between 2004 and 2024. Six different approaches have been identified to define digital equality, including meaning-as-conflated, meaning-as-given, meaning-as-contested and others. An important observation is that digital equality is seldom defined in detail – where definitions are provided, they tend to frame digital equality via a deficit model focusing on “fixing” the perceived deficiencies in stakeholders’ digital use, skills or access. We argue that this model could be restrictive in many ways and propose five lenses to advance the conceptualization of digital equality. Copyright © 2025 The author(s).