TWINTEL Solutions

Jason Shim

Specialty Mentoring Program Facilitator, Pathways to Education

Mosaic Counselling and Family Services

Whether you are a front line youth worker, a parent, or a social media marketer, the question remains the same: "How do you communicate so that teenagers will listen?"

A couple of years ago, my colleagues and I were spending over 150 hours a month on the phone trying to reach high school students in our program. Each time an event took place, or there was a change in our scheduling, we would have to notify several hundred teenagers by phone. The average call would take approximately 6 minutes. Of those 6 minutes, less than a minute was actually spent talking to the student. The other 5 minutes were spent doing one of the following: