There are all sorts of discussions recently about the role of Youth Work and the web. Tim has produced his interim report ‘Youth Work & Social Networking‘, back in February a YoungScot report concluded that “Youth groups risk losing out to social networking sites like MySpace unless they rethink how best to attract teenagers” (a pretty dumb perspective in my opinion), and a discussion on the CYP Forums asks if social networking is a threat or an opportunity for Youth Work?

Add to that the ongoing discussions (and events) about how best to support young peoples ‘online safety’ and more positively how to effectively take advantage of the opportunities presented by using social media technologies.

Well all this earlier got me thinking about whether we’ll ever see a ‘virtual youth service’?!

Much of the youth work type stuff online at the moment is information - you can go over to thesite.org and dig out all sorts of useful info and chat about it in their discussion forums, over on the Connexions site you can get advice & information via text, email, phone or messenger, and of course the various youth organisations and charities all offer information and in some cases bulletin boards and blogs about their various services and related information.

All these are really doing though is using the web to put out information. What I was wondering is whether or not there will become a service dedicated to supporting young people to actually using the web effectively, and to deliver informal education through the web? I know to a degree this may already happen in face to face sessions but what I was thinking more about was a service of people skilled in working with young people but also highly skilled in using web technology. An online team that young people can turn to when wanting advice about using services or wanting to set up their own blogs, upload and edit films, deal with cyberbullying etc. etc. - a little bit like detached youth work going out on the streets to work with young people where they’re at, only this would be going online into the spaces where young people are.

Then again maybe there will be online virtual youth centres?! If so what would these be and how would skilled workers take advantage of young peoples interest in the web to deliver informal education?

Thinking of online youth centres reminds me of a few years ago when we set up a YoMo ‘Habbo Room’ using Habbo Hotel. We had a recreational room and a meeting room complete with chairs round a big table and we attempted to hold some online meetings with staff and volunteers on there. It was a good laugh but we hadn’t realised at the time there was no way of recording the discussions and so all the long chats we had vanished into Habbo space!

Anyway I wonder what a future ‘web Youth Service’ would look like - what skills would they need, what technologies would they use and what benefits would it have for young people?