The development of digital competence in adolescents is essential to the challenges of today’s society, which is strongly influenced by technology. Digital competence is no longer seen solely from the perspective of technical proficiency, as it now involves cognitive, social, and objective skills, which are all necessary for an effective and capable use of digital technologies, both in school activities and for personal use. This study aims to carry out various comparisons (regarding to gender, schooling, school location, parents’ academic qualification, help with school tasks, and reading habits) regarding the five areas of the DigComp project: information, communication, content creation, security, and digital problem solving. An adaptation of the ECODIES v2 tool was used (assessment of digital competence of compulsory education students) and applied to a sample of 810 young people aged 11 to 19 years, students in schools in the district of Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The main results show schooling, school location, and help with school tasks are not determinants in acquiring better digital competences; girls are digitally more competent than boys; students with parents with a lower level of education have lower digital competences; students who have reading habits (not related to school activities) have better digital competences. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.
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