Tova Harris - Post #10 - Using Social Media and Participatory Culture to Program Around AI for Teens
Today’s teen librarians are more than information guides - they’re cultural facilitators in a digital landscape where teens aren’t just reading content, but remixing, creating, and collaborating. Drawing on Henry Jenkins’s concept of participatory culture, social media becomes not a bulletin board, but a shared creative platform, especially powerful when designing teen programming around emerging technologies like AI.
Young & Rossmann’s (2015) five social media content themes, Announcements, Library Services, Engagement, Community Building, and Education, offer a strong strategic base. But when filtered through Jenkins’s participatory lens and applied to AI literacy, they become catalysts for co-creation.
Start with Announcements and Library Services: instead of simply posting “New AI workshop next week,” make it participatory, “Should our next AI lab be art, code, or chatbots? You decide.”
Teens aren’t just being informed; they’re shaping the agenda. This reflects Jenkins’s idea that power is shared in participatory spaces.
Engagement posts are where teens meet AI creatively. Invite them to use tools like ChatGPT to write collaborative stories or generate AI art inspired by books they love. Post challenges like: “Turn your favorite scene into an AI-generated image, and tag us!” This isn’t just tech exposure-it’s participatory authorship.
Community Building happens when you amplify their experiments. Feature teen-created AI poetry, zines, or TikToks on library channels. Collaborate with local schools or coding clubs. Jenkins emphasizes that participatory culture is networked. Community forms when youth see themselves reflected in shared cultural production.
Finally, Education becomes a dialogue. Co-host a “Teens & AI Ethics” stream or ask them to critique AI bias. Instead of top-down teaching, invite teens into critical co-learning, where both librarian and youth explore AI’s risks and possibilities together.
When librarians align these content themes with Jenkins’s participatory ethos, teen programming around AI becomes more than curriculum-it becomes community-led innovation. Teens don’t just consume AI, they question it, create with it, and use it to shape their own stories. Do you have any AI-centered programs you might be interested in using the intersection of content themes with participatory culture?
Hi Tova, I couldn't agree with you more that giving patrons a choice and inviting participation is the best thing you can do! It makes programs feel even more collaborative and allows everyone to have a say. I always think it's good to give the choice in advance so you can prepare the options and aren't thrown off guard. Having the time to curate the program around their choice makes it purposeful and makes people feel heard- you don't want to do it too close and feel like you have to rush to revise the program to suit people's preferences.
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