Whether you like it or not, your area’s Instagram account (or any public facing account) is already communicating something to the kids in your town. The question isn’t whether you’re doing digital contact work. The question is whether you’re doing it on purpose.
I’ve been training Young Life staff on this for a couple of years now, and one of the first things I tell people is that their social media presence is doing contact work even when they think it’s doing nothing. A kid who searches up your local Young Life account and sees a grid full of Bible verse graphics and club posters is getting a message. It’s just not the message you think you’re sending.
Here’s what I mean.
Kids use social media differently than we do
This is probably the most important thing I’ve learned in this whole process, and it took me too long to figure it out. Adults (Millennials, Gen X, Boomers) we use social media primarily for information. What’s happening? Where’s the event? What time does it start? Then we use it for entertainment. And somewhere way down the list, we use it for relationships.
Gen Z flips that completely. They use social media for relationships first, then entertainment, and information is dead last. This is a massive insight for anyone in Young Life, because it means that if we are using our Instagram accounts as a digital bulletin board (posting club times, event flyers, and camp registration links) we are essentially invisible to the kids we’re trying to reach. They scroll right past it. Or worse, they see it, decide this account isn’t for them, and unfollow. And then all your future posts become irrelevant because they’ll never see them.
This is not a new idea, by the way. We already know this intuitively when it comes to in-person ministry. If you showed up at a high school campus for the first time and the first thing you did was hand every kid a flyer for your youth group, you’d be terrible at contact work. You’d know that. We all know that. But somehow when we get on Instagram, we forget everything we know about how to build relationships with kids and default to being a poster machine.
So what does good digital contact work actually look like?
Think about what makes you good at in-person contact work. You show up. You’re present. You’re interested in kids. You learn their names. You remember things about them. You comment on what matters to them, not what matters to you. You earn the right to be heard before you ever say anything about Jesus.
Instagram gives you every single one of those tools. You can follow the kids in your area. You can watch their stories and respond to them. You can comment on their posts, not with “Come to club Tuesday!” but with “That goal was insane” or “Your dog is hilarious.” You can use DMs the way you’d use a conversation in the hallway. You can post content that shows who you are as leaders and as a community, content that makes a kid say “these people seem cool” before they ever walk into a room.
I was just talking with a staff member in the Southeast who told me a kid came to club for the first time and said, “I’ve been following your Instagram for like six months. It just seemed like you guys were having a good time.” That kid had been doing six months of digital contact work with their leaders before anyone even knew her name. The Instagram was doing the work.
The three principles
When I train staff on this, I keep coming back to three things. I’ve shared them before but they bear repeating here.
Relationships over information. Every piece of content should prioritize relationship-building over information-sharing. If you have to share logistical info, wrap it in something relational. Don’t post a flyer. Post a 15-second reel of your leaders being goofy on the way to club and mention what time it starts in the caption. The reel builds the relationship. The caption handles the info.
Hyper-locality. Your Instagram account should be so local that a kid from the next town over wouldn’t follow it because it wouldn’t make sense to. We’re not trying to build a big following. We’re not competing with influencers. We are trying to reach the specific kids in the specific schools that God has called us to. That means your content should have the names of your schools, your town, your inside jokes. It should feel like a group chat, not a billboard.
Success is in engagement, not numbers. I don’t care about your follower count. I care about whether the right kids – the ones in your schools, the ones who need what Young Life offers – are interacting with your content. A post that gets 12 likes from 12 kids in your school is infinitely more valuable than a post that gets 200 likes from people all over the state.
Okay, but what do I actually post?
I get this question a lot, so here are some things that tend to work:
Behind-the-scenes content from club, camp, or contact work. Not polished. Not produced. Just real. A leader laughing with kids. The setup before club. The van ride to camp.
Short reels set to whatever audio is trending that shows the energy and personality of your ministry. You don’t have to be good at this. You just have to be genuine. Kids can smell fake from a mile away, online and offline.
Interactive stories. Polls, question boxes, quizzes. These are gold because the algorithm rewards engagement and because you’re literally learning about the kids in your area while they interact with your content. It’s digital contact work in real time.
Leader introductions. A 20-second reel where a leader says who they are, what school they hang out at, and one random fact about themselves. Simple. Effective. It gives a kid a face to look for when they show up.
Content that celebrates kids. Sharing a kid’s accomplishment (with permission), highlighting a sports moment, shouting out a birthday. This is the digital version of showing up at their game. It says “I see you.”
The bottom line
Your Instagram is already telling kids in your town something about Young Life. It’s either telling them “this is a community of people who care about you and want to know you,” or it’s telling them “this is a program that wants you to come to its events.” One of those leads to relationships. The other leads to unfollows.
If I could leave you with one thing, it’s this: use social media the same way you would use the school lunchroom. Show up. Be present. Be interested. Earn the right to be heard. The platform is different but the principles are the same ones Jim Rayburn was talking about 80 years ago. Go where kids are. And right now, kids are on Instagram.
Sources & Further Reading:
- Pew Research Center — Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024 – The data on teen platform usage (90% YouTube, 63% TikTok, 61% Instagram, 55% Snapchat)
- Sprout Social — Social Media Demographics 2026 – Gen Z platform preferences, daily usage patterns, and the finding that 41% of Gen Z turn to social media first when looking for information
- Pew Research Center — Social Media Use Among U.S. Teens (Fact Sheet) – Longitudinal data on how teen platform usage has shifted over the past decade
