This is a draft guide to using Social Media tools for Youth Engagement.

Version 0.0.1 - July 2009

• People can be connected like never before;

• We all now have the power to create and publish media to local and global audiences;

• Young people are growing up in a constantly connected world - where the digital is part of the everyday;

It is hard to find a sphere of life untouched by the rapid rise of social technologies.

This guide has been created to support practitioners working with young people to understand and engage with social media and social networks.

It is a practical guide which introduces and explores new online tools. But it is not a guide about those tools. It is a guide about positive engagement with young people. And about the shift towards a more participatory culture in work with young people, and society more widely.

Social Media & Youth Participation

LGIU have published key learning on social media and youth participation in this printed guide, available for £10 or for free download as a PDF.

It is also an experiment in writing a resource for practitioners. This guide is written through a Wiki and the intention is that it will be regularly updated - to operate as a living resource.

It is shared right now as an early work in progress - but with the hope that the shared learning it contains will prove useful to anyone working with young people.

Choose from the options in the main menu to explore this guide and it's different sections covering the what?, why?, how? and tools of social media for youth engagement.

You might like to read about this guide or to find out more about the main author Tim Davies and Practical Participation who collated this resource.

The contents of the guide is based upon work sponsored and supported by The National Youth Agency and The Local Government Information Unit.