Your child is doing homework on the tablet they brought home from school. Watching that, you might feel that "school is already taking care of the digital side of things."
And in fact, the devices have reached everyone. On paper, nearly every child in Japan is now in a position to "use" a computer or tablet.
School-issued devices have become the norm
According to the preliminary results of the fiscal 2025 "Survey on the Internet Usage Environment of Young People," published by Japan's Children and Families Agency in February 2026, 72.7% of young people aged 10 to 17 use the internet on a computer or tablet issued or designated by their school — the so-called GIGA devices. That approaches the level of smartphones (78.5%) and exceeds game consoles and televisions. NTT Docomo's Mobile Society Research Institute likewise reports that about 80% of elementary and junior high students nationwide use their loaned device at home, and about 60% do homework on a tablet or PC. "Using the school device at home, too" is already an everyday scene.
And yet only 1 in 20 elementary students has "a PC of their own"
When it comes to a computer that belongs to the child, however, the numbers shrink dramatically. In a fiscal 2025 survey of 19,141 elementary and junior high students in municipalities it supports (published June 2026), the education company Edu-Net found that 3.9% of first graders and only 7.0% of sixth graders own their own PC — roughly 1 in 20. Even in junior high school the figures stay low: 10.4% in 7th grade and 12.7% in 9th grade. In the same survey, 87.2% of junior high students owned their own smartphone — 90.4% of 9th graders, the highest since the survey began — so the contrast is stark.
・Young people using the internet on school-issued devices (GIGA devices): 72.7% (Children and Families Agency, FY2025 preliminary results)
・Internet use on a home PC or tablet (including shared family devices): 42.5% (same survey)
・Children who own their own PC: 3.9% in 1st grade to 7.0% in 6th grade; 12.7% even in 9th grade (Edu-Net, FY2025 survey of 19,141 students)
・Junior high students owning their own smartphone: 87.2% (same survey)
Even counting devices shared with the family, only 42.5% of young people use the internet on a home PC or tablet — home digital environments have not caught up with what schools have put in place.
A loaned device doesn't reach as far as "creating"
One way to read this gap is, "There's one at school, so we don't need one at home." But a school device and your own computer, even as the same kind of machine, differ in what they allow. Loaned devices carry filtering and functional restrictions for study use; installing the software you like, setting up a programming environment, or seriously editing images and video is generally not possible. They are fine for "using" within a defined range, but not suited to trying out your own ideas and "creating."
What the 1-in-20 figure shows is that children who own "a tool of their own they can freely experiment with" are still a small minority. For typing, for programming, for instructing generative AI — the fastest route to getting better is touching the tool again and again in an environment where failure is allowed.
Producing things with AI requires a PC
Whether a child has a tool of their own is a difference that grows heavier as AI spreads. If all a child does is ask generative AI questions and read the answers, a smartphone is enough. But the moment they move to producing something with AI — composing long prompts, saving and revising the text or programs AI writes as files, editing and finishing generated images and video — a keyboard, a large screen, and an environment where files can be handled freely become the premise. In other words, a PC. Most of the programming tools in which AI assists development are likewise built on the assumption that they run on a PC.
A child who grows up with only a smartphone can practice receiving AI's answers, but gets almost no practice directing AI to make things. The junior high figures — 87.2% owning their own smartphone versus 12.7% owning their own PC — suggest that children's relationship with AI risks tilting toward consumption. The tools needed to move to the side that masters AI and creates with it are overwhelmingly lacking in children's hands today.
It doesn't have to be an expensive new machine
What deserves emphasis here is that a child's computer does not need to be an expensive new one. Writing, researching, getting started with programming — the performance needed at that entry point is fully covered by a secondhand, previous-generation PC. For junior high and high school students, from the day they get a machine of their own, the very act of setting up their environment — something the school device never allowed — becomes part of the learning.
Digital Kodomo BASE refurbishes computers donated by companies and individuals and delivers them to children free of charge in Ota City, Tokyo, alongside free workshops where children can use computers freely. We want "having your own PC at home" to be ordinary, not special. That 1-in-20 figure among elementary students is the starting point of our work.