Imagine, just as you have gotten with the times and started to effectively use social media to communicate and engage with younger audiences, the tool is yanked away.
That is kinda what is happening in Australia where a new social media ban on those under 16 went into effect in early December. The Art Newspaper had contacted a number of museums in that country to get their take on what the impact would be. Some said there wouldn’t be a lot of impact because most of their attendees weren’t under 16.
Others said they had been working on cultivating engagement with teenage audiences and had seen their attendance skew younger.
However, Russell notes that “increasingly teenage audiences are a focus for museums and galleries in Australia,” adding that “some social media platforms are used strategically to engage these audiences—platforms like TikTok, for example, have offered museums and galleries opportunities to communicate their content and collections in new ways, often playfully, engaging younger audiences with cultural collections.”
[…]
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), for example, attracts a young demographic through its doors, with 50% of its visitors under the age of 35, according to a museum spokesperson. “Youth engagement is very important to MCA, and we provide options for all ages to engage across our platforms, programs and events—including our website, e-newsletters for families and parents, free access to the museum for under 18s, free group visits for school and tertiary students, and deep engagement through selected school and community outreach programs,’
It will be interesting to see what direction arts organizations who would like to increase the participation of younger people may take. Messaging to parents to encourage they bring their kids utilizes a different appeal than those used with the kids themselves.
On the other hand, use of social media may be too engrained in younger people to effectively ban. Apparently young Australians are using their parent’s accounts, using VPNs that make it look like they live in other countries, migrating to new apps that aren’t currently covered by the ban. Arts organizations may find they can continue to achieve their goals by creating content for consumption by a group that technically isn’t supposed to be accessing it. In fact, there may be some value in messaging that reinforces the rebellious identity the teens & tweens feel when they are circumventing the ban.
Little post script– Case in point, Aussie museum are missing out on the opportunity to promote to the kiddies like the National Gallery of Art did today for their Open Call to remix their art work. You have to be 18+ to enter, but folks too much older than that may not understand the video.
