RU GETTING THE MESSAGE: THE BEST WAY TO REACH YOUTH TODAY

Teens talk with their fingers – not by making a call. A report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project (which is always worth checking out for new trends involving teenagers and young adults) has found that while texting continues to increase, using the phone to make a voice call has significantly declined.

The Pew Centre found that 63 per cent of teens exchange texts with friends, but only 29 per cent talk daily with friends on a cell phone – and far fewer use a landline.

And the number of text is growing quickly – the median number of text sent on an average say was 60. (And for teenager girls, the median was 100.)

What’s the take away: If we want to reach our youth, we need to communicate on their platform. That means sending texts to alert them to events at church, remind them about worship responsibilities coming up, and for just checking in on them.

Let your fingers do the talking.

Here’s the study, if you would like to take a look.

http://pewinternet.org/Media-Mentions/2012/75-percent-of-youths-text-a-lot-daily.aspx

And an Los Angeles time story if you’d like to newspapers take on it:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-pew-report-teenage-texting-up-20120319,0,3936572.story