This article presents a practical and psychometrically grounded approach to measuring the current state of youth digital literacy through a coherent indicator set and the construction of a Local Digital Literacy Index (LDLI). Building on international frameworks and assessment traditions, we combine a multi-construct instrument—covering information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety and well-being, and problem solving—with performance tasks and self-report scales. The study outlines the full pipeline from construct definition and item generation to piloting, reliability analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and index normalization. To guide replication in schools and youth centers, the paper introduces transparent scoring rules that balance interpretability and validity: domain scores are computed from graded tasks and calibrated self-reports, then aggregated using factor-score weights and scaled to a 0–100 metric. A feasibility pilot with secondary students illustrates expected benchmarks for internal consistency, sampling adequacy, and model fit, and demonstrates how the LDLI can reveal differences across demographic subgroups and access conditions without collapsing into a proxy for socio-economic status. The discussion emphasizes that digital literacy is not device familiarity but a transferable repertoire of cognitive, social, and ethical competencies that can be taught, assessed, and improved. Implications include establishing local monitoring cycles, aligning instruction with the most fragile domains, and using LDLI results to design targeted interventions rather than sorting students by ability. 

Digital literacy, indicator development, index construction

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