Digital safety of adolescents: assessing content management, digital identity and information environment skills

In today’s digital environment, the issue of safety is becoming increasingly urgent due to the rapid growth in the number of young users on social networks and in the online space in general. Children and adolescents are forming their own digital reality, which opens up significant opportunities for communication, learning, self-expression, and leisure, yet it also carries various risks such as informational manipulation, cyberbullying, phishing, breaches of privacy, and the distortion of digital identity. This article explores the level of digital safety skills among adolescents, particularly in the areas of digital content management, digital identity, and interaction with the information media environment. The findings reveal that despite adolescents’ high engagement in digital spaces, their digital safety competencies remain fragmented and insufficiently developed. The article emphasizes the need to prioritize the development of digital literacy within educational institutions. This includes integrating topics on digital safety and media literacy into educational programs, where students can learn the principles of ethical behavior online, recognize manipulation, cyber threats, disinformation, and harmful content. It also highlights the importance of interactive sessions aimed at fostering critical thinking as a foundation for digital hygiene, helping adolescents understand their personal digital boundaries and how to protect personal data. Furthermore, it supports conducting practical trainings on digital privacy basics and simulation-based learning to respond to cyberbullying, suspicious messages, phishing attempts, and unauthorized distribution of personal photos. It is substantiated that the effective implementation of digital safety policy requires regular monitoring of students’ competencies. Periodic surveys, digital behavior analytics, and reflexive assessment tools should become part of the internal educational system–not only to detect existing gaps, but also to flexibly adapt educational content to the real needs of the student population.