I have had a lot of questions on how to keep student’s attention on Zoom. Lots of reports of students not turning their screen on, being disengaged, or straight up not attending Zoom events have been coming in.

While there are some obvious ways to get more engagement such as not being boring, speaking with energy, and making the time you have together valuable and more than just an information dump. I actually want to talk to you about why the question may in fact be the wrong one. 

Zoom shouldn’t be your replacement for in person youth

So here is the issue I have seen in many cases. We have replaced Friday night youth (or whatever night you run programming) with a Zoom call. Lots of groups try to run a game, a message, and some discussion through their Zoom events. The problem is this Zoom doesn’t mirror enough of your in-person experience to be fully engaging. What do I mean by that? Think of it this way, Zoom plus maybe a short video clip is basically the “church service” element of your youth group while you are online. Imagine if that was all you did in person, kids came to the building walked in the room, played a quick game, sat through maybe a few songs, heard a message, prayed and left. If that was the full experience, I would argue you would not have many kids engaging. Normally, there is usually hang out time before, video games, air hockey, basketball. And then after there is usually food, hangout, community. Without these elements Zoom is like dry roast beef without the gravy.

So how on earth do I cover all that without in person gatherings?

Here is the thing. Nobody said it would be easy, or that it’s even possible to replicate the experience fully. But I propose you as a youth leader to look at it from a different angle. Instead of 1 or 2 large events in a week, what could it look like to have your youth experience spread out throughout the week. What if you had a devotional on Instagram on Monday, then had some of your leaders available for videos games online Tuesday, maybe one of your leaders could use Zoom to do a craft that you delivered the supplies to the students beforehand. Or other leaders are using the House Party App with some other students. Wednesday you could release your weekly YouTube content (in house created or shared from a channel like The Bible Project for free) Then Friday you could do a short Zoom call with everybody to discuss the content shared on Wednesday and split into small groups within Zoom. It could look anything like this as long as it fits your culture. The important thing is to stretch your perspective beyond mimicking your physical gathering and see how you can first off maximize the impact of the volunteers around you to bare the load (you are not the hero in this story) and secondly to have more short bursts of engagement instead of one or two longer events. 

There is no perfect way to do online only youth events. It’s a process of trial and error. The key is to keep trying new things. Don’t be so married to a model that you forget the mission is the most important thing. If you have tried anything that has helped get online engagement with your youth, I want to hear about it!

Email me at Jeff@abnwt.com

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