How social is social media?

How do young people from poorer backgrounds use social media? This was the question that The Bridge Group and WM Housing Group looked to answer at a recent jointly-hosted Young People’s Digital Awareness Day.

More than 20 youngsters, between the ages of 12 – 21, including schoolchildren, apprentices and young people living in foyers, attended the day.

The full results, including questionnaires from other youngsters in the west midlands, are still coming in, but the overwhelming evidence suggests that these people, who largely came from economically excluded backgrounds, use digital media much the same way as anyone else.

• 100% of the youngsters use social media, the vast majority of people accessing the internet from a computer either at their, or someone else’s home.

• Facebook and text messaging are their favoured sources of communication

• 60% access the internet every day

However, busting the myth that young people nowadays hide behind technology, 65% of the youngsters preferred to liaise with their friends face-to-face and 70% prefer to communicate with organisations either face-to-face or on the telephone.

And organisations beware, the younger generation claim to have a healthy cynicism of company pages on Facebook as they feel well aware that these can be sales tools.

Nikki Cheung, Senior PR Consultant at The Bridge Group, who helped facilitate the day, said: “Many studies exist on how young people communicate, but evidence on how young people from less affluent households use digital media is few and far between.

“It is important for us to understand this social group so that we can best advise our clients how to communicate with their current or potential future customers.

“The day was great fun and highly interactive. However, now the hard work begins. When all the analytical data comes in we must then interpret the information so that we can put together a report complete with tips for organisations which work with young people.

“I would like to thank everyone at WM Housing Group who was involved in this event. It truly was a joint exercise and I look forwards to maybe repeating the exercise again in the future as we keep abreast of trending technology.”

Watch this space for the analysed results…