Facebook, Twitter and the Coming Revolution

As social media sites expand, teenagers may be leaving. That’s right; teenagers are moving away from Facebook and Twitter for the next BIG thing – location-based, mobile games. With GPS enabled mobile phones and data packages, teenagers will gravitate toward mobile games like Foursquare. There are a couple others but Foursquare seems to be developing and pioneering this new technology-driven game. The concept is simple – combine the activity updating portion of FB and Twitter with GPS tracking so others will not only know what you’re doing but where you are. Within the next year, these sites will be huge with teens that have iphones, droids, blackberry’s, etc. Teens are moving onto something else. College-age students will catch onto location based games first and then younger students.

Why are teens going to leave Facebook and Twitter - Because the fastest growing demographic group joining Facebook is women 55 and older?

The implications for student ministry are tremendous. Wouldn’t you like to know where your students hangout? Suppose you pull into a fastfood restaurant to eat only to glance at yr phone and notice a few of your youth are eating down the street – join them. Keeping track of your youth via location based mobile games will not only be fun, it will also be a useful tool as you incorporate technology-driven ministry.

Student ministry must utilize technology to meet the needs of today’s youth. As teens move to the next BIG social media, student ministers need to be waiting; ready to minister. The days of ministering to students with just Wednesday nite thing, youth camp and DiscipleNow are long gone. It is rare I see youth minister’s posting podcasts of their message on church websites. What about online Bible-studies or interactive, video-based worship and prayer?

Technology-driven student ministry will become commonplace as students lead the coming revolution forcing churches to quickly move to the cutting-edge of ministry.