top of page
Search

Digital engagement with young people: Why organisations need to rethink

Two young people doing a TikTok dance being filmed on a smart phone.

Last week I hosted a coffee morning for the Consultation Institute. We were talking about digital engagement and how to reach beyond the usual voices. The conversation quickly went to digital engagement with young people – something lots of organisations are keen to do.  

The obvious answer is that many young people are on TikTok. Perfect, that’s the plan then? Well it’s still not quite that simple.

Where young people are and how they use social media

Let's start with some insight – a very good place to start.

Young people aren’t using social media the way organisations imagine.

For 18–34-year-olds in the UK, YouTube is the most used platform with an average of 88 minutes spent daily, followed by TikTok at 49 minutes and Instagram at 35 minutes (Sprout Social, 2026).

The channels many public sector organisations still prioritise - Facebook, Twitter/X, newsletter emails - are simply not where young people live online.

And young people aren’t just scrolling – they’re searching.

63% of Gen Z use TikTok to find news and the platform has become a primary search engine for this age group (Metricool, 2026).

Research from YPulse found that only 46% of 18–24-year-olds begin an information search on Google, compared with 58% of those aged 25–39 - with 21% of younger users starting their search on TikTok instead (Axios, 2024).

This matters for public sector organisations. If a young person is trying to find out about a local health service, a housing option, or a participation opportunity, they may never encounter your website. They will find a video from someone who seems like them, talking about their experience.

The authenticity problem

At the coffee morning, we talked about the instinct to "get on TikTok". I've been there myself – and ultimately decided it wasn’t right for our organisation as we didn’t have the resources to make videos every day.

But the truth is – no matter how good your social media team is, a corporate account trying to speak to young people will always carry an institutional fingerprint. Young people can feel it – it gives “I’m a cool mom” vibes.

There is research to back this up. Studies on how young people form trust online consistently show that adolescents and young adults seek out peers who present themselves authentically. I have heard this directly from young people myself.

The spaces you don’t control

Trust is the foundation of effective engagement and trust is built in the spaces where organisations are least active. Young audiences engage with peer-to-peer messaging, influencer content, and short-form video from real people.

This doesn’t mean that organisations should give up on attempts to engage more young people via social media. It just means they need to fundamentally rethink the opportunities and approach.

The question isn't "how do we make our content more engaging?" It's "how do we find, support, and amplify the voices of young people who can speak to their own communities?" There is a huge difference between broadcasting at young people and enabling them to speak for themselves.

The trust deficit – it’s bigger than a communications problem

I was lucky enough to spend some time last year with Greater Manchester’s Bee Heard Youth Group. We were designing an online information hub around different health topics. Several participants said that they would be far more likely to listen to someone their own age going through the same thing than a doctor or nurse. It wasn’t that they didn’t value expertise, but they don’t feel like professionals always fully understand them or that they take into account the full picture of their lives and what is bothering them.

If young people are more likely to trust their peers, then the most effective engagement strategy involves peer voices at its centre. Not as a marketing technique but as a genuine commitment to co-production.

When a young person says they'd rather hear from someone who has been through the same experience, they are telling us exactly what good engagement looks like. The question is whether we're willing to adapt our understanding of what engagement should look like or keep defaulting to what’s comfortable to us and what we have total control over.

We also need to rethink what ‘data’ from engagement could look like

Young people express themselves in comments, reactions, voice notes, short-form videos, and peer conversations. These are rich, nuanced, qualitative data sources that tell us things a well-designed survey never could. Are organisations allowing these forms of expression feed into formal consultation or service design processes.

Engagement processes that only count what's easy to count will systematically underrepresent the communities least likely to engage through traditional channels.

What would it look like to design an engagement process that accepted a 30-second video response? That treated a comment thread as evidence? That took seriously what young people say on their own terms, in their own formats? These are not radical ideas in my opinion. They require organisations to be willing to process and act on input that they can’t download into a spreadsheet.

The communication shift we cannot ignore

There has been significant discussion recently about the impact of screen time and digital media on how young people process information. This is a genuinely contested area - the research is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.

What is clear is that the media environment young people have grown up in shapes how they consume and process information. Short-form, visual, fast-moving content is the default. Sustained linear reading of long documents is not. Fast-paced content has been associated with reduced ability to sustain attention on longer tasks, and this has real implications for engagement design (MDPI, 2025).

Even more reason to adapt.

If you want to reach young people, you have to meet them where they are - not just geographically or on platforms, but cognitively. That means shorter, clearer, more visual communication. Break things down and be prepared to listen rather than lead.

What better digital engagement with young people could look like

Digital engagement is one of the most exciting areas to work in. The opportunities are massive – we just need to stop using digital as a megaphone and start using it as a two-way channel.

Here's what I think better looks like:

  • Enabling peer voices

  • Design for how people receive information

  • Rethink what counts as a valid response

  • Measure the right things

  • Be willing to be uncomfortable

  • Stop treating digital as a place you post a survey link and hope for the best

In closing

The conversation at the coffee morning last week was a reminder that the people working in engagement and participation across the public sector are asking the right questions. But the shift requires a fundamental change in mindset and strategy – across an organisation – about what engagement is, who it should centre, and what should count as success.

At Open Voice Lab this is exactly the kind of work we exist to support and would love to hear from any organisations looking to progress any of the ideas we have presented in this piece.

Sources and further information

Comments

bottom of page