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Led by the University of Leuven, the project involved 15 partner institutions across Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and the UK) from leading international centres for research on media studies, communication sciences, youth research, psychology, pedagogy, law, educational neuroscience and sociology.

ySKILLS aimed to identify groups of children who were at a greater risk of having low levels of wellbeing because of their ICT use and to understand how digital skills can function as protective factors, building resilience and shielding children from harm. Offering a critical perspective, ySKILLS extends traditional conceptions of skills by recognising children’s views as the experts on their skills and in their capacity of young citizens with agency, voice and rights.

Project objectives:

• To acquire extensive knowledge and better measurement of digital skills;

• To develop and test an innovative, evidence-based explanatory and foresight model predicting the complex impacts of ICT use and digital skills on children’s cognitive, psychological, physical and social wellbeing;

• To explain the ways in which at-risk children (in terms of mental health, ethnic or cultural origin, socio-economic status, and gender) can benefit from online opportunities despite their risk factors (material, social, psychological);

• To generate insightful evidence-based recommendations and strategies for key stakeholder groups to promote digital skills and well-being.

 Leen d'Haenens, Project Coordinator on ySKILLS

To date, there is no authoritative account of either the determinants or impacts of digital skills, notwithstanding the enormous body of policy and educational work that view digital skills as essential. Both academia and society would greatly profit from a model connecting the determinants of ICT use and digital skills with their impacts on wellbeing. With ySKILLS we want to understand why and how some children and adolescents reap greater benefits from ICT use while others seem to be negatively impacted. That is why the role of digital skills in relation to children's and adolescents' overall wellbeing needs to be researched further. In ySKILLS we also want to acquire a better measurement of digital skills, thus not only the technical skills, through performance test assignments.

More about ySKILLS:

Reviewing the existing evidence

• Conduct a systematic review of the existing evidence to identify what is known and where the gaps are regarding the children’s digital skills and their possible effects on well-being;

• Based on the existing evidence, identify the actors and factors which shape 12-17-year-olds’ digital skills and their outcomes.

• Generate priority research questions and hypotheses for further research.

• Undertake a critical review of ySKILLS conceptual model and prepare the integration of theories based on this and other research carried out across ySKILLS.

Developing robust methodologies for measuring digital skills

• Develop and validate digital skills measurement through performance testing and self-reporting scales for the cross-national longitudinal survey;

• Create a conceptual model of digital skills as multi-dimensional to include functional, critical and strategic aspects of skills;

• Broaden the study of digital skills beyond technical-operational skills, to include information navigation and processing, social interaction and communication, and content creation and creativity.

Understating the benefits and risks for vulnerable children

• Investigate whether digital skills improve or undermine at-risk children’s well-being and what role they play for fostering coping and resilience.

• Learn whether at-risk children equally benefit from digital skills, or whether, by contrast, different groups need different policy and practice responses.

• Tap into important and barely studied types of vulnerabilities in the digital age by exploring the experiences of two different groups of at-risk children: refugee and first-generation migrant children living in Belgium, Greece, UK; and children from Norway and the UK experiencing internet-related mental health difficulties (excessive use, self-harm, cyberbullying).

Mapping recommendations for realising children’s rights in the digital age

• Build on the synthesis of project results regarding youth’s digital skills and well-being to generate European recommendations for policy and practice;

• Incorporate and respond to the views and participation of children and adolescents in the research process;

• Relate the results and recommendations to the relevant legal standards and bodies;

• Frame these in terms of the rights of the child in order to further their realisation in relation to the digital environment.

Systematic evidence mapping – what do we know from the evidence so far?

• A systematic mapping of the evidence, to be broken down by year (e.g., first decade of the internet, second decade), country, age group (primary/secondary school pupils), classification of country by digital development (DESI ranking), quality (based on abstracts and publication outlets) and focus, will reveal what is known and not known (evidence gaps).

• A rapid evidence assessment to understand the role of – and unanswered questions regarding – digital skills in the theoretical model of the ySKILLS project. This task will identify the (f)actors which shape children’s and adolescents’ digital skills and their outcomes, thereby generating a series of hypotheses and priority research questions, as well as the information needed to critically review the ySKILLS conceptual model and prepare the integration of theories.

How can we measure digital skills?

• Develop a robust longitudinal survey to measure short- and medium-term impact of ICTs on children and adolescents by applying a set of different methods for testing different dimensions of ICT uses and digital skills.

• Cognitive interviews and performance tests will be carried out with a subsample of children and adolescents in six countries to validate the survey instruments, including also newly developed and adapted items for measuring digital skills. The performance test instrument can also be used by educational institutions.

• The survey is longitudinal with three waves of data collection. It will be mostly based on self-reported data and some achievement tasks. A multi-informant peer-to-peer approach will also be used, collecting data on estimated skills of classmates to be used for network analysis.

Refugee and migrant children and adolescents: Vulnerable or media-savvy youth at Europe’s margins?

• Adopt a multi-method qualitative approach including 30 semi-structured interviews in each of the three countries under study (Belgium, Greece and the United Kingdom) generating rich data on patterns in media use.

• Draw cross-European comparisons regarding refugee and migrant children’s ICT-related concerns for wellbeing; and their perceptions of the online/offline resources and obstacles associated with wellbeing.

• Generate a purposeful sample of young people (aged 12-17) (10 in each country) to participate in a so-called asset mapping, during which we will use games and playful techniques to map out children’s and adolescents’ online world in a non-confrontational way. This approach will allow us to generate 1) systematic qualitative data that reflect complex and sensitive narratives and experiences associated with their wellbeing and mental health, as these relate to ICT use with a focus on social media; 2) cross-European comparative analysis of migrant and refugee children’s experiences as media users at the social margins; and 3) a child-centred/user-centred innovative methodology that engages with children and adolescents, as participants, not subjects.

Children and adolescents experiencing internet-related mental health difficulties – the benefits and risks of digital ski