Formation of communication skills of students in the digital space

The digital space is an actively developing area of social reality, the impact of which on modern man is so wide and diverse that it is difficult not only to predict, but also to describe. Of particular interest is the degree of influence of the digital space on young people, in particular on student youth, as a social group that is simultaneously influenced by one of the most inertial social institutions – the Institute of Education and integrated into the digital space almost from the moment of birth. The depth of this integration allows us to talk about the formation of the dependence of student youth on the digital space. The paper presents the results of several studies (online surveys) conducted in 2022 and aimed at identifying the degree of dependence of young people on the digital space and, in particular, on digital communication. The respondents were full-time students of humanities. The paper also describes the main markers of digital addiction and the degree of their manifestation in students. The main markers of dependence on digital space include: the frequency of access to digital space, the duration of interaction with digital space, and the depth of emotional connections. Degradation of the subject's communicative personality was considered as an additional marker. Based on the presented data, the author concludes that the nature of the digital dependence of student youth is rather declarative, due to the non-reflexive agreement of students with the signs of digital dependence attributed to them, while the older generation tends to call addiction a strong degree of youth involvement in digital communication processes. Based on the presented data, the characteristic of the modern student's communicative model is given, recommendations are given on building the educational process aimed at developing the complex communicative and digital competence of the future specialist.