Young people and digital media

 

When thinking about the subject young people and digital media, I wanted to first search some statistics. Young people, age 15 - 24, are the biggest group to use digital media according to Statistics Finland. The commonly used platforms are WhatsApp, Youtube, Instagram, Spotify, Snapchat, Tik Tok and Facebook. Of these mentioned platforms Facebook has lost it´s users during the latest years, considered more to be a platform for more adult people (ebrand.fi, SoMe ja nuoret 2022). 

Who then reaches the young people in social media? I asked this question from a few young women in this age group to mention some Finnish influencers they follow. The first names to come up were lääkäri Atte and terapeutti Ville. Also popular are some fitness or health influencers, one mentioned was No Nelli Vaan who was considered to be realistic and reliable. Those features were appreciated and also that the posts are made fun to follow. One religion based channel was mentioned Paavalin seurakunta who post subjects in religion in a good but light and funny way. Paavalin Seurakunta is a church in Helsinki. The women told that they also follow many different bloggers or vloggers and they were very aware, that the social media is full of weird and not so reliable stuff. 

For young people the most important thing in social media is interacting with each other and keeping themselves aware of what´s going on in the youth life. Some belong to different communities like gaming and some use social media because of loneliness (ebrand.fi, SoMe ja nuoret 2022). For social professional to reach this target group, I think the best way is to know what good sources the social and digital media offers and how to guide the target group to benefit different digital opportunities. It demands that professionals take time to use and follow these social platforms themselves and for example research the available apps for young people to use when they face difficulties in life. Some easy tools you find are for example the Chillaa -app and now the latest, a page called Omahelpperi. It is focused just for young people and in this one web page you can find the links to different chats or helping phones. It´s a very simple but at the same time very important page to support the well fare of our youth. I think digital media can offer more good tools in the future to help us professionals to connect and reach young people.