Self-efficacy and anxiety of digital natives in face of compulsory computer-mediated tasks: A study about digital capabilities and limitations

Digital limitations (or, conversely, digital capabilities) are a new way to frame the digital divide discourse in three dimensions: access, cognition and behavior. Digital limitations address an individual's barriers to properly access the information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as his/her cognitive disabilities and negative behaviors towards ICT use effectiveness. In a survey with 174 undergraduate students in a traditional state university in underdeveloped Northeastern Brazil who compulsorily use an institutional ICT-based academic system, we investigated the factorial structure and the relationship of two constructs that pertain to the cognitive dimension of digital limitations - computer self-efficacy and anxiety. Our findings address the negative correlation between the two constructs and the unanticipated proposition that both low and high levels of self-efficacy and anxiety do not signal per se the presence of cognitive digital limitations or capabilities.