In recent years, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have radically transformed our daily lives, our work, and our social relations. Today's economic sector poses a need for high-skilled workers who, in addition to having a solid foundation of traditional literacy skills, are also highly proficient in digital skills.

The relevance of this topic is also recognized from the European Commission, in different initiatives, for example The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), where lifelong acquisition of e-skills and competencies is recognized as a key component in the 21st century (European Commission, 2010; European Commission, 2013), and the digital compass for 2030, based on four cardinal points: skills, government, infrastructures and business (European Commission, 2021).

In this general context, schools play a fundamental role in promoting the development of ICT-related skills, ensuring that future citizens can participate actively and proactively in the development and economic and social growth of the country. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has made the value of these skills even more salient, from school to work and even to services, including health-related services. Recent experience of doing school during the Covid-19 pandemic, in fact, has shown us the value of information literacy both as a competence in itself and as an instrumental competence to the learning of other disciplines. Hence, trying to understand how today's young people are prepared for this new challenge has become crucial (e.g., Fraillon, Ainley, Schulz, Duckworth, & Friedman, 2019; Fraillon, Ainley, Schulz, Friedman, and Duckworth, 2020).

 Already since the mid-1990s, there has been talking of a digital divide, to indicate the different opportunities for "physical" access to technology (e.g., availability of a computer, an internet connection, a smartphone).

Today people in European countries, regardless of gender, age, socio-economic status, have access to these devices and the digital divide goes beyond the issue of access to technology, and the debate focuses on digital skills (Hargittai, 2002; McLean, 2006; Zhao & Elesh, 2007). Not always having access to these devices corresponds to skills in the use of e-services, effectively hindering the learning of new digital skills using technology. For example, in a recent study, Murray and Perez (2014) administered a digital literacy assessment to graduate senior and they found that most students (about 70%) did not pass the tests, demonstrating that the exposure differs from understanding regarding the digital technologies.

 The IEA’s (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) ICILS (International Computer and Information Literacy Study) deals with the basic knowledge, skills and understanding that students need to succeed in this dynamic information environment.

The survey evaluates the digital skills of grade 8 students in order to understand how students are prepared for study, work and life in a digital world.

The first cycle of 2013 unveiled the myth of the 'digital native', the assumption that just because young people grew up surrounded by digital technology, they have excellent ICT (Information and Communication Technology) skills, but digital natives are not digital experts, young people do not develop sophisticated digital skills just by growing up and using digital devices.

Based on the previously discussed literature, this study aimed to examine the relationship between ICT use and ICT skills to understand some of the crucial aspects of promoting the acquisition of the digital skills needed in the 21st century. The focus was in particular on identifying students’ profiles based on their expertise, considering both ICT skills and the frequency of their use across European countries that participated in ICILS 2018.

Method Data sources and participants The analyses presented in this paper were conducted on the ICILS 2018 data for Grade 8 students. ICILS used a two-stage sampling design (for a detailed description, see Fraillon et al., 2020). Students with missing data in one or more variables described below were excluded from the analysis. Therefore, the overall sample consisted of 20,055 students from 7 participating European countries, namely Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Portugal. Measures The variables used to identify latent profiles of ICT students’ expertise (Fraillon et al., 2020) were: - Use of ICT for accessing content from the internet (ACCONT). - Use of general applications for activities (GENACT). - Students’ use of ICT for social communication (USECOM). - Students’ use of ICT for exchanging information (USEINF). - For each of the above variables, student responses were placed on a scale with a mean score of 50 across all countries and a standard deviation of 10, using IRT partial credit scaling. - Computer and Information Literacy scale (CIL) with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. - Socio-economic and cultural status (SES): (1) student home environments, including the parents’ educational level (2) the number of resources for study available at home, and (3) the number of books in the home. - Computer experience in years (EXCOMP). - Smartphone experience in years (EXSMART). Two variables from the questionnaire were also considered for the analyses: - Frequency of use of ICT outside of school for school-related purposes (SCH_out). - Frequency of use of ICT outside of school for other purposes (OTHER_out). Statistical techniques A separate analysis was carried out for each considered country: the descriptive analyses were conducted using the software IEA IDB Analyzer (IEA, 2021). Latent profile analysis (LPA), using MPLUS (Muthén & Muthén, 2009), was performed to create homogeneous groups of students based on different levels of expertise in using ICT, considering both students’ Computer and Information Literacy results and questions about their experience and use of ICT. The LPA analyses were performed using MLR estimation. Models were estimated using 1000 random sets of start values with 50 iterations each and the 50 best solutions retained for final stage optimization to avoid converging on a local solution. The Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) and the Adjusted BIC (ABIC) were used with lower values on the criteria indicative of a better fitting model.

Results and discussion Concerning Computer information literacy, Denmark had the highest average achievement (553), followed by Finland (531). The LPA model was used to identified profile of student expertise in ICT use. Due to the interpretability and meaningfulness of the identified patterns, the three-profile model was chosen. In almost country the entropy is satisfactory (around .90): Group 1 - Noobs Students from this group report lower levels of ICT usage, performed poorly in the computer literacy test, and had a lower level of SES than the other groups. Group 2 - Pros This group presented a medium level of use of ICT and the highest level of CIL. The mean in CIL is above their respective country mean. The means of all other variables are in line with their respective country mean. Group 3 - Bots This group presented the highest frequency of use in all variables considered, but the mean in CIL is lower than the group of “pros”. Conclusions The results evidenced that students who spend a large amount of time using ICT cannot do it proficiently. At the same time, students who use ICT very little, have the lowest level of ICT ability. This study adds an additional aspect to the matter, namely that using devices not automatically corresponds to better skills in the use of ICT. Rather, the crucial aspect appears to be how proficient students are in using ICT and what they do with them, not simply to use them a lot. The results of this study seem to confirm the importance of educating children to a conscious use of ICT, which must be seen as an important tool to enable students developing their potential, so that they can fully participate in a society more and more driven by information and the ability to appropriately use it.

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