Youth Work in the Digital Age: We’re Not Ready and Young People Are Paying the Price.
Originally presented to the Islands of Innovation project, February 2026
Young people today are the most digitally connected generation in history. They learn online, socialise online, get their news online, and increasingly — they seek support online. But are young people just using technology, or are they being equipped to shape it?
In Northern Ireland, there are good technology jobs with opportunities across the UK and Ireland. Good jobs. Jobs that didn’t exist ten years ago. Jobs that will define the next decade. And crucially, as I increasingly hear these big companies say, these jobs are accessible, regardless of whether someone followed a traditional academic route. But it does feel like that for the young people I meet every day at Bytes. My experience is that entry-level roles that gave previous generations their first foothold into work, retail, hospitality, and customer service are shrinking. Self-checkouts. AI chatbots. Algorithms managing warehouses. So, if getting an entry-level job is tough, well, a tech job seems even more remote.
So where does that leave young people? And what role should youth organisations play?
I was asked to contribute to the Islands of Innovation project led by Youth Action NI, bringing together young people from Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales around digital citizenship and media. What follows is my perspective on three connected challenges: the youth organisations that support young people, the people who work with them, and the AI systems that are increasingly part of their lives.
Because if we’re serious about young people’s digital futures, we need to get real about the risks and excited about the possibilities.
The Infrastructure Gap Nobody Wants to Talk About
Youth organisations, in the main, have poor digital infrastructure. We know that at Bytes, thanks to our TechSecure programme. Which raises an urgent question: how can youth organisations genuinely be useful to young people navigating the digital world when they have a half-price digital infrastructure?
In 2022, the Wired-Up report, produced by The Bytes Project and Dr Donna Kernaghan for the Community Foundation NI, surveyed over 400 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations across Northern Ireland. What they found should concern anyone who cares about youth services. 45% of organisations have no digital strategy at all. Not a bad one, just none.
When you break the NI findings down by size, the picture gets worse. Community groups and local charities, often the ones doing frontline youth work in the most deprived areas, are significantly behind. Only 47% of community groups rated their digital culture as good or excellent, compared to nearly 70% of larger regional charities.
And here’s the funding reality. Smaller organisations are paying external IT contractors (if they are lucky) to keep their systems running and their data safe. One senior leader put it bluntly to our researchers:
“We are a service provider. We are not IT people. We have to fundraise just to keep us digitally safe and working.”
Digital isn’t a nice-to-have. This is core infrastructure.
The Skills Reality — and Why Curiosity Beats Expertise
The Wired Up? research asked staff and volunteers to rate their own digital abilities. When it came to connecting with people outside their organisation, only 54% rated themselves as good or excellent. Over a third agreed that staff lack the skills to support young people who are digitally excluded.
But we don’t need to be experts. We need to be curious. We need to be willing to learn alongside young people, not pretend we have all the answers. The UK National Youth Agency puts it well: the world of digital is huge and complex, so get support from those around you.
At Bytes, through our Tech Secure programme, we’ve been working with organisations across the sector on exactly this basic cyber hygiene (this doesn’t mean cleaning your keyboard!). Building digital confidence from the ground up, not turning youth workers into IT specialists, but giving them enough understanding to work safely and confidently in digital spaces. We are only developing this work. We are not experts. But two things are key: youth organisations need someone to develop this area of work, and it fits with the Bytes mission to try…so we are trying!
Rethinking Delivery
Infrastructure and staff skills are only part of the picture. There’s a bigger question about what youth organisations should be doing. At The Bytes Project, our new strategy has digital skills at its heart. But we are not losing our identity. We will improve digital skills using a youth work methodology. That doesn’t mean a rigid curriculum that every young person follows. That’s not how youth work operates, and it’s not how young people learn best in youth work settings.
Our approach is different. Make it fun. Make it accessible. Make it enjoyable. Be a genuine advocate for the good in tech — the creativity, the problem-solving, the potential to build things that matter. Then, in the right moments, have real conversations about the dangers. Not as a lecture. Not as a list of things to avoid. As a genuine dialogue with young people who are already navigating this stuff every day.
It does not mean youth organisations will create digital experts. We have apprenticeships, schools and colleges for that. Youth organisations should be a gateway into simple things like accessing a device or free data. We should be about creative digital media that is fun and does not require a portfolio of evidence at the end for a qualification. We should be at the forefront of talking to young people about how to use AI effectively and to understand the benefits and risks, particularly of open-source AI models. We should be having conversations about what is real on digital screens and how to judge it.
I want youth workers to know more about this so they can organically link it into their work with young people. This is exactly what young people need right now. But we are not doing this well.
Youth Organisations as Bridge-Builders
There’s another dimension to this that we don’t talk about enough: opening doors to companies at the cutting edge of digital technology.
Many young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, those who didn’t thrive in school, those who the system has written off, don’t see themselves in the tech industry. They don’t know anyone who works in cybersecurity. They’ve never met a software developer. AI feels like something that happens to them, not something they could shape.
Youth workers can change that. Not by becoming tech experts (as I have already outlined) but by building connections. Bringing digital professionals into youth spaces. Taking young people to see what these workplaces look like. Showing them that the person who designs apps or protects systems from hackers might have started just like them. I am starting to see so many tech experts in big companies who can talk about a background that would suggest if they were sixteen today, they might end up at a Bytes Youth Hub.
The tech industry talks a lot about wanting diverse talent and looking beyond traditional recruitment pipelines. Last week, I had this exact conversation with a large insurance company that is massively integrating AI into its operations. They’re not seeking graduates the same way they did ten years ago. They are using schools and colleges. It is time for youth organisations to become one of those pipelines.
Some young people won’t want to work for big tech companies; they’ll want to build their own thing. Start-ups. Social enterprises. Apps that solve problems in their own communities. Youth organisations can nurture that too.
I can hear the purists of youth work shouting at me. I am not sure I care. We need youth work for the 2030’s, not the 1990’s. That means youth work can be open access and led by young people. Still, youth organisations should be able to introduce young people effectively into all things digital, which requires youth organisations with:
- A better digital infrastructure – devices, safe access to the internet and paid software subscriptions so young people are not sharing data (image, voice, etc.) on open-source models.
- Staff who can be curious about digital technology alongside young people.
- Partnerships with companies driving digital technology into their workflows so young people can see what it really means. Particularly here in Northern Ireland, where we have so many startups and companies looking for people to develop, rather than graduates with a 2:1 (not that this is a bad thing!).
The Work Ahead
There is digital deprivation, and youth organisations that lack the infrastructure to address it. There’s a need for education, and youth workers who need training and confidence to deliver it. There’s the question of access to opportunity, and how youth work can be a genuine bridge to careers that require digital skills. And there’s AI, with all its promise and its risks, and why human relationships still matter more than ever.
This generation isn’t just going to use technology; it’s going to create it. Given the right support, they’ll shape it. Build it. Maybe even fix some of what’s broken. I love youth organisations. I am proud of what we have in Northern Ireland. But we are doing enough to help young people access opportunities to play and explore digital technology. Two easy things we should do: improve our digital infrastructure and give staff confidence.
At Bytes, we believe youth work has a crucial role to play, making digital skills fun, accessible, and enjoyable; being honest about the dangers; and opening doors to opportunities that too many young people don’t even know exist. At Bytes, we are not the finished full package! Our staff tell me that all the time. But we are going to try.
