Engl. transl.: Always Connected: Digital Skills among Students

Today's teenagers have technology literacy, although there are differences between them in terms of access, use and skills. By the time when children enter middle school some of them have better access to digital resources. The lack of it often deprives young people's opportunities to develop valuable web skills. In this article we examine the available literature and research methods of digital skills. Using the data from a survey of students between 13 and 18 years in Sofia city we will attempt to outline guidelines for measuring the actual skills of students and skills challenges, threats and children's abilities gaps which do not give them a chance to compete in the digital age.

Students spend a lot of time on the Internet and social networks. The majority of them, 72.5%, indicated that they use the Internet everywhere. A large proportion of respondents state that they know how to create and upload online content and make changes to already created content. However, they do not feel confident in creating websites and have knowledge gaps related to online content licenses: which ones apply to them and what they apply to. The data show that all selfassess themselves highly, which means that they have higher than basic digital skills. However, with this type of research one of the main concerns is the high level of subjectivity. Teenagers don't make a difference between social networks and digital media and only a small part have an idea what social media and networks constitutes. From the questions related to information skills it can be seen that respondents meet difficult when searching for information. A similar problem is seen in the creation of content. The data show that the average score at 13 and 14 year-olds in content creation skills a significantly lower. Respondents feel confident in communicating online. They can easily and freely write comments on blogs and social networks, they know with whom to communicate and feel at ease because they know what information they can safely to share online. The questionnaires, and self-assessment questions are useful for outlining guidelines to apply tests and outline weak and strong skills. But for more - full and real measurement of digital skills among students is necessary a study of their theoretical and practical knowledge and analysis of the time, spent on the Internet and the activities they perform.