Digital youth work is, at its heart, just youth work. It is about meeting young people where they are at and doing what we do best: supporting, guiding and empowering them on their journeys to adulthood. The difference? We’re using technology as one of our tools, activities, topics or spaces.
It can be anything from setting up a games console in a youth centre, chatting about online safety during a game of football or heading out to deliver detached youth work with a VR headset to help discuss knife crime or identity. It is about weaving technology naturally into practice rather than seeing it as a big, scary, separate thing to all other forms of youth work.
This is nothing new: youth workers have been using tech for years. From the days of gaming with young people on Sega Mega Drive back in the 1990s to dabbling with the first 3D printers, we’ve always adapted and included tech in our practice