I currently work in the youth services of the city of Kajaani in outreach youth work. An outreach youth worker works with young people aged 15-28 and offers them help and support with a low threshold. The youth worker can help, for example, in finding a school place or a job, in financial matters or as a confidential counsellor. The meeting with a youth worker is voluntary and it is up to the young person to choose where to meet. For example, we meet young people face-to-face in the office, at a café or in a library. We can also be reached via Whatsapp, which is one of the main tools we use on a daily. You can also reach us via Instagram which is used nowadays quite frequently. I can also be reached once a month on Discord. We also answer anonymous questions in the local “Is this normal?” chat.

In addition to the apps mentioned above, I use Teams in my work every day. Teams allows me to efficiently organize meetings, share files and communicate easily between the youth outreach team and the whole work community. We also have the possibility to offer a meeting to a young person through Teams.

The five apps I have chosen:

Today’s young people prefer fast-paced apps that provide a lot of information in a short time, such as Tiktok. In our organization, some of the youth services staff use TikTok and we are also planning to introduce this app in our youth outreach work. TikTok as an application requires a lot of active updating to help young people find us.

Snapchat is also commonly used in the youth work field. Currently, the Snapchat app is used especially by underage youth. In my work, Snapchat would allow me to market outreach youth work to younger people as well. Currently, our clients are young people aged around 21-25.

In youth work we generally talk about being where the young people are and this also applies to social media. Young people find us approachable when we have a comprehensive social media presence. Also, many different people working with young people are on Jodel. Jodel is an anonymous chat application that includes different channels for different types of young people. Jodel as an app allow an anonymous platform for young people to approach us youth outreach workers with a very low threshold. The anonymous chat would familiarize the young person with youth work and, depending on the situation, they could also seek a face-to-face meeting.

Facebook was used in my work years ago, but the use of it has declined since Instagram came more widely used. However, I would still see Facebook as suitable for my work and my target group of clients. Facebook, like the apps and platforms I mentioned earlier, would also be suitable for low-threshold meetings and would also be a good app for marketing my work. Youth outreach work s an unfamiliar concept for many young people and comprehensive marketing on social media creates an approachable image of youth outreach work and increases young people’s awareness of the low-threshold services.

Youtube is also a popular channel among young people, which would require a lot of time from our staff to produce quality content. Youtube also requires active updating and marketing to attract people to the channel. Youtube would enable a lot and would be a very informative channel to make concrete videos about what happens in youth outreach work. If Youtube were to be actively used in our work, its introduction would require a dedicated social media manager responsible for the rich content of the channel.

The introduction of digital tools requires extensive familiarity with the applications and active updating. Building a brand requires work and it is good to stop and think about the kind of material you want to update about your work. It is also important to consider data protection issues. In our youth services we ask every young person of legal age for example in group activities whether they can be photographed or share photos on social media. Minors are asked for written permission from their guardians to use photos.

Self assessment:

With this task it was interesting to think more broadly about digital applications from the perspective of my own work, although the applications I mentioned in the task were familiar to me from my leisure time. Social media is a world of its own, which requires keeping up with the times and sometimes poses a small challenge to keep up with changing trends. However, when working with young people, it is important to be aware of new applications. There course as a whole interesting and the assignments were fun to do. The tasks required of reflecting on my own work from many different perspectives.  It was also really interesting to use WordPress as an assignment platform. I had very little previous experience of the site in question.