Tapping into the two hours a night

Many young people are spending upwards of two hours a night on Social Network Sites like MySpace and Bebo. A lot of that time will be spend interacting with friends that they see everday - but some will also be spent browsing, exploring and interacting with the profiles of bands, brands and other people.

There are many profiles and groups out there on most Social Network Sites where young people can find out about important issues, interact with charities, and access support and advice. However, many of those profiles are tricky to find - so young people may need a map.

When you're planning a group work session with young people - why not think about creating a list of Social Network Site profiles they could take a look at afterwards? It offers an opportunity to tap into that two hours a night of Social Networking with some positive input, and if offers a challenge to young people to engage deeper with an issue.

Plus - by pointing young people to Social Network Sites, you create an opportunity to talk about Safe Social Networking. The example hand-out below shows how you might link safety and opportunity on Social Network Sites.

Creating your own Social Network follow up handout If you want to create your own Social Network Site follow up hand-out, then the instructions below may help you:

1. Safety First - when young people join a group, or 'friend' a profile, their profile picture, as a clickable link through to their full profile, will be listed as a friend or member of the profile/group. That means their profile could be more easily found - and so it is important to first make sure that the young people you are offering Social Network Site follow-up links to have thought about the privacy settings on their profile.
   
   Once you are happy that they are thinking about privacy settings - there is nothing to stop you sharing links to positive profiles - as long as you are happy that those profiles are run by trusted individuals or organizations.
   
   
2. Find positive profiles - Both MySpace and Facebook run a list of not-for-profit organisation profiles where you will usually find at least one relevant organisation.
   
   On MySpace look at the lists on http://www.myspace.com/impactuk
   
   And on Bebo look at http://www.bebo.com/bewell
   
   On Facebook you will need to use the search feature to look for groups. Search for the name of organisations you know are working on the issue you have been addressing.
   
   The idea of providing links for different Social Network Sites is to 'go to where young people are at'. Focus your efforts on providing links for the places where you know the young people you work with have profiles. You should also try and include one or two website address for those who do not have Social Network Site profiles - as the purpose of the exercise is not to encourage young people to sign up to any particular site.
   
   
3. Create short links - if you hand on a bit of paper with links like this:
   http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1306406134
   not all that many people are going to bother typing the whole thing in. You can shorten links like this by pasting them into a short web address service like http://is.gd which creates a shortcut address which is far easier to type into a browser.
   
   
4. Create your handout - you could use the image above to get ideas about the sort of things to include. Ideally your handout would have a few notes about safety - alongside links and descriptions of what those links are to.
   
   
5. Use the handout - after your group work session.
6. Get feedback - next time you see the group - find out if they looked at any of the sites. Ask about any issues the different profiles raised. Get ideas from the group about other profiles and links that the handout could have included.
   
   

If you do create a handout - why not head over to the UK Youth Online community to share it with others. You can upload it as an attachment to a blog or forum post.