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Back to newsLauren McCombie-Smith from the Frontier Youth Trust contributes to our Resistance series, with some reflections from her own Youth Work experience
A few years ago I had a fascinating conversation with a young person about social media and news. It was during the emergence of the Covid season and the Ukraine War had just broken out. As a youth worker I was trying to work out how to appropriately open up conversations around these huge terrifying shifts in the world. During a discussion a young person passionately advocated that the most reliable platform for news information was Tik Tok. I’m usually pretty unflappable as a youth worker but this one did take me by surprise. They were so disenfranchised by mainstream media; so trusting to a platform they saw as speaking their language and so unaware of the dangers and potential fallacy of online material.
There are lots of conversations out there about how we “protect” young people from harmful online material. The world is quietly watching the progress of the social media ban that Australia has recently implemented for all young people under the age of 16. However, the truth is that we can’t. Whether our concern is radicalisation, Pro-Anna websites, SEOM (sexually explicit online material), misinformation or AI; this online content is not going away. Young people have access, will find access and will be sent access. We are not the only ones concerned; young people themselves are worried about these things too. A BBC Bitesize Teen Summit Survey in 2025* found that 66% of young people asked were worried about fake news and misinformation online. They are concerned about knowing what is real and not real online. What we can do, what we must do, is start to teach critical literacy. We need to train ourselves and future generations to navigate this new digital landscape: to question everything, to believe nothing and to instead view all content consumed through a lens of critical thinking and analysis. This needs to be a foundational cornerstone of both formal and informal learning as well as how we move through the world.
It is only by centering critical literacy as our cornerstone that we can support young people in developing their own agency; and therefore put the power back in their hands over their own formation and personal development. Our role as youth workers has never been to be saviors, but to be facilitators. It's never been our job to provide answers but to encourage questioning.
We can so easily get swept up in our own agendas, our own programmes, data collection and procedures. Sometimes we need to step back and refocus our vision with the young person at the centre. Otherwise we can too easily relegate the realities of the everyday lived experiences of the young person in front of us.
In youth work we are familiar with the missional need to support the immediate needs of the young people we are serving. When delivering the sermon on the mount Jesus fed the 5000 first, showing compassion for his community's immediate needs. Today young people are existing in a culture of social media pressure, unhealthy relationships, radicalisation, cancel culture, SEOM, misogyny, abuse, knife crime, drugs, alcohol, vaping, county lines, grooming... And yet, these topics are barely mentioned in our youth spaces. All this does is communicate to our youth that the real issues of their lives are too messy for us and not welcome. Perhaps to deliver Christ like youth work is to mirror his compassion. To not glaze over the messy, dark and complicated parts of young people's lives outside of the walls of the church (and the potentially dark places online) but to meet them where they are at and to journey with them wherever they are going.
Lauren McCombie Smith (she/her) Movement Advocate for Frontier Youth Trust
