Youth workers must go digital

As a detached youth worker walking the streets of south Birmingham nearly 20 years ago, I based all my engagement with young people on the premise that I needed to go to where young people chose to meet.

Now, as a youth work academic and researcher, I am increasingly convinced that detached youth work may need reconceptualising in light of social changes linked to the advent of online communication.

In its report Digital Youth Work, Finland's state-funded digital youth work agency Verke claims that digital youth work is an "absolute requirement to keep up with the times".

Meanwhile, there has been much debate on whether social media is fuelling the recent spate of violence in London. This shows the blurring of boundaries between the virtual and online world, and raises questions about how youth workers might respond meaningfully to youth violence in this context.

Develop new skills

In their recent report examining this issue, Irwin Rogers and Craig Pinkney argue that youth workers need to develop new skills if they are to respond to youth violence within this new social reality.

They suggest workers need to be able to distinguish between images and videos that simply reflect young people's lives and those that contain explicit threats, claims to territory and taunting that could lead to violent reprisals and retaliation.

As Jeffrey Boakye persuasively argues in his book Hold Tight about grime music, some young artists are using social media platforms to chart their efforts to escape violence and promote positive messages.

As a detached youth worker, I was able to utilise music production as a vehicle for discussions around young people's aspirations and relationships. In some cases, young people with whom I engaged went on to pursue fruitful careers in the music industry. I came to realise that many young people develop online identities as a means of escaping from their circumstances.

Although not a cause of violence per se, the process of self-promotion, imbued with large doses of hyper masculine bluster, can certainly initiate it. In some cases, videos have been created that show young people being humiliated and physically harmed or young women being exploited. The pressure for young people to respond, to retain status and reputation can be overwhelming.

Youth professionals still seem uncomfortable entering what can feel like a quagmire of legal and social issues around young people's use of social media.

The e-safety training that is available, by focusing on safeguarding concerns, can stifle honest, open dialogue about the nature of young people's online behaviour. Young people often seem so confident that adults will not be engaging with social media platforms that they are happy to openly divulge criminal behaviour, which may reflect some naivety about the extent to which their behaviour is being observed.

The online environment allows users to develop idealised identities, to express their anxieties and insecurities, but also to edit out those parts of their lives they do not wish others to see.

Young people's online identities are then subjected to the vagaries of the "likes" of others. In this way, their view of themselves is dictated by their perception of how they are viewed by others. Although social media platforms can allow young people to collectivise in positive ways, they can also engender "group thinking" imbued with dominant notions of, for example, gender identity.

Intersectional education

This suggests a need for youth workers to engage in critical and intersectional gender education practices that allow young people, and especially young men, to express their vulnerability as well as their self-confidence.

Youth workers, detached youth workers in particular, need to think seriously about how to enter into digital spaces where young people are interacting and building their identities. Council and voluntary youth services need to consider how they use their resources in this digital context.

The mistake would be to believe that simply engaging young people via online platforms is enough to keep up with the times.

There are questions to consider. Is it appropriate to distinguish face-to-face from digital youth work? Is there something more demanding about engaging in dialogue face to face? What would digital detached youth work look like on the ground?

Detached youth workers can no longer afford to be digital aliens when young people are living as digital natives. There is little or no prospect of a reversal in their direction of travel, so perhaps it is us as professionals who need to alter our course and allow young people to show us the way forward.

• Pete Harris is senior lecturer in youth and community work, and criminology, Newman University, Birmingham
  
  

Ways for youth workers to use social media

• Communicate with young people through social media to advertise sessions and events
• Organise gaming days and tournaments to mitigate social isolation
• Start discussions in What'sApp groups, talking with young people about what they are watching and seeing online, and developing their ability to be critical about what they see
• Support young people in the creation of web content such as creative writing or short films, which can act as counter narratives to dominant discourses around young people and violence