The use of digital technologies by young people as well as the impact of e-learning have been the subject of a significant number of research studies carried out all over the world. However, when it comes to student perceptions about the place and role of these technologies in their lives, research looks towards university students. This paper aims to understand what the technologies represent for school students, in their personal and school lives. It is based on a study that brings together two contexts, representing opposing cultures and trends: France where the policy on school computers has been in place for more than two decades and India where the government has only recently begun to make efforts to overcome the digital divide in the country. This contrastive study conducted in the two countries in 2009 among 960 young people aged between 11 to 18 years, shows the importance of schools in constructing private spaces to be shared with peers, a role that has long been attributed to home computers. This paper thus furnishes elements of explanation for the relative disenchantment that the young people feel for the school-related usages of the technologies. For these young people, school is not about individualist autonomous learning, it is about learning from teachers as a group.