I’m not working at the moment, I am a full time student. My job earlier was youth leader for the church. I spent a lot of my time working on the computer and using different programs. For example Teams for meetings, e-mail, Office -> calendar, Word, different booking programs to book spaces and equipment, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and WhatsApp. I planned events, did bookings, had contact with people and other organisations, advertised and published on social media, planned and had meetings. The other half of my work was meeting and connecting with people in person. We organized groups for the youth, families, children and the edlerly. We had camps, clubs and other get-togethers.
Covid-19 had a big effect on my work. When it wasn’t possible to meet face-to-face, it was very important to use social media and other online platforms to meet and talk with people, to have and hold contact. I was familiar with using social media on my time off, but it was a new experience to use social media so much for working. It was quite innovative how people came up with new ways of using social media in the church and some of those are still in use and became a useful part of everyday work.
Going through this list I thought that the amount of different platforms and applications we use is massive! Especially while working, how many platforms we really need to keep up with the youth or other “customers” and can they really replace the old fashioned way of calling and meeting face-to-face.
These are the apps and tools I used most at my work
Pinterest is an excellent place to find inspiration. You can find pictures and ideas for almost everything, if you do the searches with different words and word combinations. I like the idea that you can save all of your ideas in canvases, so it’s easy to find those again without printing. I have used Pinterest to find ideas for baking, crafts, decorating, organizing and planning theme parties.
At the church I worked at, we had our own channel for work with youth and children. We used that channel to inform people about happenings and other stuff that was going on at the church. I think that Facebook, like other social media as well, is I easy and convenient channel to inform and advertise. It’s also a good place to introduce people and the work we do, making it easier for people to contact us. I used Facebook for work pretty much daily. I think people find it easy to contact others on Facebook instead of calling. I also was a part of different groups on Facebook that were connected to my work, to get some inspirations and support.
While working I used Instagram with my workprofile. I had my own profile that I had created for work purposes. On that profile I talked about my work and shared pictures of things we did with the youth and children. With this you always had to be careful which pictures to share, so that everyone has given consent. I think Instagram was a good place to get to know the youth and learn more about their way of seeing the world. We had our own hashtags and that made our groups tighter. This made it also easier for our participants to contact us, when they had the feeling that we are close and understand their way of life more. Instagram, like Facebook, was also a good place for networking and getting new ideas and inspiration.
Whatsapp is a really easy and great way to communicate. You can have a lot of different groups on Whatsapp, and it makes work easy, when you don’t have to send the same message to 20 different people but instead just send it to the group. I also like to use Whatsapp web, when you can open the app on your computer. This way it’s quicker to write messages and easy to send pictures and other media. I like to create groups for every new event and delete them afterwards, this way you can use Whatsapp almost like a calender.
Youtube
During Covid we started using Youtube a lot, when restrictions started and we had to come up with different ways of connecting with people. Youtube was a great platform for materials we did and used with different groups, such as prayertimes, concerts and worships. This is one of those that is still used quite a lot, there’s a lot of streamed material from different churches you can find on Youtube.
These are the ones I haven’t used before but could consider using working as a youth leader.
Vimeo
Vimeo app is something I could definitely use working with the youth. For example on confirmation camps you could use the app as a learning platform and create material in it. It would be interesting to take part in a confirmation camp that would emphasize a lot on the usage of social media as a tool. There are pros and cons, do you want children to use their phones more or less during the camps. You can have endless discussions about should you take phones away from the youth during lessons or is it in fact better for them to use their phones as tools. I think Vimeo would definitely be worth trying, you could also use it in meetings and groups instead of PowerPoint.
Skype
If Covid taught us something, it was how to meet up on distance. Skype could be a good tool to use to meet up parents/guardians before confirmation camps. Normally we meet face-to-face, but these meetings could also happen online. Skype is an easy tool to use.
TikTok
TikTok is an application you should definitely be familiar with while working with youth. A lot of people use it and make content on it. It would be good to be seen on TikTok as a worker and a face for the church. It’s also a good place to see what’s trending and is there something that you should know/ be worried about as a youth worker.
Blogger
I have started using blogger during my studies and have thought a lot how I could use it also in my work. It would be a slower alternative for other social media. I think youth often need, or at least it would be very beneficial, for them to slow down and not just scroll, scroll, scroll without even thinking what they’re seeing. A blog could be a nice way to make content, for example from a confirmation camp, the parents could follow the blog during the camp. A blog is slower, something you need to focus on more, if you compare it to for example Instagram stories that has a picture and maybe some text and it flashes by in seconds.
Doodle
Doodle is something I could use at my work while planning for example a meeting with a group. Doodle is quick and easy, you feed in the options you would like to use and you can limit who can moderate it. Doodle could be used to plan different things in the working group as well.
There’s always two sides on using social media, should we use it more or less. Is it good to use it at schools, while we work, on our freetime, hobbies… It’s a great tool, but has it gone too far?
The idea of endless technological developments is not very sustainable. If we always have to have the newest, biggest and fastest, we soon won’t have a planet left. Social media is a great tool, it makes life easier, it’s easier to keep in touch with people, to get new contacts and use services online. At the same time it makes me ask, why do we need to be more efficient all the time? What’s the rush, where are we in a hurry? What are we going to do with all the spare time we get from using more and more digitalization and new technologies? It will be very interesting to see how things develope from here and how this time is seen when they do studies in 2040.
SELF EVALUATION
This is a subject that stirs a lot of emotions in me and makes me think about myself, how much is enough? What do I need to have a good life, what kind of a balance between online world and the real one.
It was interesting to get familiar with some new tools and applications. Some I knew from before but there were others I hadn’t heard about before. Something I started to think was, how many applications do you actually need to do your work? Is it better to use a few skillfully or to use dozens and make okay content. Working with people you need to always consider that there are also people who are not interested in digitalization or social media and some find it very hard to use them. Having all content just online is not a very good way to reach everyone. We need to be equal in this as well, even tough it might mean some extra work, for example advertising in the newspaper or sending letters home.