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12/09/2020 07:30 AMThe world of Tik Tok, Discord, and Instagram might be pretty foreign to most those who don’t count themselves as members of Gen Z—people in their teens to very early 20s. Complicated dances, multi-layered memes, and arbitrary challenges all seem like nonsense when viewed from the outside, and these apps have garnered somewhat of a bad reputation from parents and those of older generations.
But at the E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, staff are hoping that Madison’s youth can leverage these platforms, using their knowledge and skills to create content to help engage their generation with the library’s important services and resources, as well as better connect to their local community and opportunities for civic engagement.
Scranton Director Sunnie Scarpa called the initiative a “reinvigorating” of the library’s teen volunteer program. While teens will still have the chance to do things like learn about library operations and help with reshelving books, they are also now being asked to film or brainstorm Tik Tok videos for the library and its programs, help plan teen-focused initiatives, and write book, movie, and video game reviews.
“I think high schoolers now are way more civically engaged,” Scarpa said. “I think the library is a really good and really unique place to volunteer for teenagers...because it can lead to so many different places, and it impacts the whole community.”
Right now, Scarpa said there are a handful of teens who come in a few days a week, using a large meeting room and library technology to put together videos or other content. Others volunteer from home, able to check out books through the library’s contactless pick-up service and write reviews that can be utilized digitally and eventually posted in physical locations in the building, according to Scarpa.
Using the platforms and formats of Tik Tok and Instagram—and allowing the people who most understand these places and their unique languages to create content—is especially important for the library, Scarpa said, as it is often impossible for adults to communicate with teens as well as they can to each other.
“It’s teens recommending to teens, versus adults recommending to teens,” Scarpa said.
Again, this can take many forms and the library is looking for local teens who can help steer the conversation to areas relevant to their generation, whether that’s sitting down to discuss a particular topic for a podcast, researching opportunities for activism, or contributing art.
Colin Welch is Scranton’s teen librarian, and he has been spearheading this more engaged, expansive teen program, including hosting the library’s podcast “Scranton Talks” and running a Discord server, a platform that allows the creation of a single community with dozens of subtopics and gives members the ability communicate through voice, text, video, and pictures parsed by their interests.
Welsh says he sees the Discord, which is invite-only and will only be open to teens who actually participate in other programs so their age can be verified, as a vast and important opportunity to connect and help teens.
“It allows them to easily have access to me during library hours,” Welch said. “I’ll have the Discord on my phone, on the computer, they can ask me a question on the Discord server and I can just respond and answer it.”
Welch says this allows for a much broader engagement, and can stretch beyond subjects directly related to the library. For instance, a channel could be set up for people seeking help with schoolwork.
“If a kid needs help with a project, while they’re at school they can message me and I can say, ‘You should try looking at this website,’” Welch said.
Though currently Scranton’s Tik Tok and Instagram accounts are only a couple months old, with posts mostly created by Welsh himself, Scarpa said she sees these engagement tools driven by teams as an important part of the long term, post-pandemic library plan.
“Those virtual connections are always going to be valuable. Kids can still do that from anywhere,” she said.
Whether those things look like coordinated dance-offs to a Megan Thee Stallion song, a podcast episode focusing on youth issues in Madison, or a video game throw-down against a neighboring town (something Welch said has already been discussed) will at least partially be determined by town’s younger generation, as Scranon works to make sure its programs hit different for teens.
For more information on teen volunteer opportunities, call the Scranton library at 203-245-7365. Patrons can follow the library’s Instagram account @smlibraryteens and its Tik Tok @scrantonlibraryteens.