When homework counts as screen time: parental limits and adolescents’ digital competence across 28 education systems in ICILS 2023

Abstract Background: Parents often limit adolescents’ screen time, and research usually records only whether a limit exists, not what it counts. In the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) 2023, students reported whether their parents’ school-day limit included schoolwork, exempted it, or whether there was no limit. We examined how these rule types relate to assessed computer and information literacy and computational thinking, and which explanations the data support. Methods: We analyzed 98,127 grade 8 students in the 28 education systems that administered the item and contribute to the ICILS 2023 international average. Within each system, we regressed each outcome on rule type, adjusting for socioeconomic background, gender, home language, and immigrant background, using plausible values, sampling weights, and replicate weights. System estimates were pooled by random-effects meta-analysis. We profiled students by rule type, compared learning reported outside and at school, and tested sensitivity to added covariates, within-school comparison, and unmeasured confounding. Results A median of 14.8% of students reported a limit that included schoolwork. They scored 24.7 points lower in computer and information literacy than students whose limit exempted schoolwork (95% CI −28.1 to −21.4; 0.30 within-system standard deviations), in all 28 systems, and 32.9 points lower in computational thinking, in all 19 systems that assessed it. Students with no limit scored like students with exempt limits in computer and information literacy (−0.6 points; equivalent at the pooled level) but 7.1 points lower in computational thinking. Students with inclusive limits reported less learning of internet tasks outside school but not at school, and no less digital schoolwork at home. The gap was larger where inclusive limits were rarer and was 21 to 22 points after within-school comparison or controls for age and educational expectations. Conclusions Differences in digital competence were tied more to what a limit counts than to whether a limit exists. Inclusive limits appear to mark students and families who differ in ways the data capture only partly, and they may also reflect fewer informal learning opportunities. Cross-sectional data cannot separate these explanations. Surveys of parental mediation should record whether limits count schoolwork.