Do the student you work with still use Facebook?
According to the recent pew research polls, teens most often use Facebook. The poll states that 71% of students use Facebook. According to the article, “Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17 with 71% of all teens using the site, even as half of teens use Instagram and four-in-ten use Snapchat.” Students are still using Facebook as their primary social media tool.
I remember a year ago when people were writing that students were leaving Facebook at an alarming rate. The problem is that they never left. All that happened is that their appetites changed. According to this report, 71% of teenagers use more than one social media platform. What does this mean for you and your youth ministry?
It means you need to diversify your social media networks. A few years ago you could get away with having one main hub for communicating to students in your youth ministry and town. Today, I suggest that you need at least 3 different ways to communicate. The three that I use regularly are Facebook, instagram, and texting. These are the most effective ways to communicate to students in my youth ministry and town.
It also means that you need to have a plan. What do you communicate with and why? These are questions that youth workers need to wrestle with. Should you use Facebook, instagram, snapchat or twitter? In my youth ministry we have a plan, and we stick with it. One of the social media platforms we won’t touch is SnapCHat. You can call me old school, but this is one platform that still freaks me out. I wrote a post called, “Why you should stop using SnapChat.”
You can see the report below, and one pew researches website here. It’s worth checking out and being aware of. We need to know where as youth workers we need to communicate, and the best place to start is where teenagers are current at.
