Today’s Youth at effective web ministry notes

Today’s Youth

filed under General by rob on 22Nov04 @ 12:22 pm EST

I was looking at some different stats today and was really impressed about online ministry for today’s youth. Most web ministry sites I see are targeted for young adults and adults. But what about the 18 and younger group? Check out these numbers:

64% of Americans who will trust Christ do so before they are 18
53% of youth younger than 18 are blogging
92% of youth use email
84% of youth surf the web for fun
74% of youth use instant message (IM)

Are you wondering how to reach the youth of today? I think you’re staring at it right now (unless someone printed this for you

But please, don’t just pop up a site to target them. Think and pray through it. Make sure the site is effective, not just another website.

Sources:
The Barna Group, Evangelism Is Most Effective Among Kids, October 11, 2004
ClickZ Stats, The Blogosphere By the Numbers, November 22, 2004
Pew Internet & American Life Project, Generation IM: Teens & Technology, October 8, 2003

For more, read Hanging Out on IM: Using Instant Messenging in your ministry.

Anyone else have good resources or articles for helping become more effective at reaching today’s youth?

One Response to “Today’s Youth”

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1 Andrew on Nov 27th, 2004 said:

A few years ago, Eric Elder created kidsranch as an outreach to pre-teens. Unfortunately I haven’t seen many evangelistic/outreach sites for kids. There are a few for teens but most are connected to a major youth ministry (i.e., Youth For Christ, Fellowship of Christian Athletes). I’d love to see more work targeting the pre-teens.

Keep up the great work with your blogs.