What do you think? How would your squadron respond to this?
I’ve been hearing in the news for the past week or so regarding the government wanting to place a ban on under 16s utilising social media. Now on the face of it, I don’t dislike it, however from the point of view of a sqn adj this will make comms with cadets potentially difficult.
1, We rely on a private Facebook group to get most of our messages and information out there amongst our cadets. It’s especially handy for last minute changes. We also use it to share awards and achievements which we don’t push to our public sites.
2, Without social media, how would we be hitting the 30:30 target via s/m engagement and advertising?
3, Access to certain resources such as this forum would potentially become impossible.
Given 12 year old cadets can’t have social media anyway shouldn’t be a major issue.
This is what Cadet Portal announcements are for etc.
I think this used to be the case, but FB and X are now. It in date order and super random, I see some things for the first time days later!
Email is the way, or use GovNotify for Text Messages.
Perhaps set up a WhatsApp Community for parents & cadets that allows for announcements etc.
The likes of Facebook you are targeting parents anyway, for direct cadet recruitment you need Instagram / TikTok (Banned for us to use).
Word of mouth is the best recruitment tool - if your sqn has a good product it will grow.
30x30s biggest challenge is space and staffing - my old sqn maintains a waiting list of ~50.
I don’t know the details, but not sure U16 access to a forum would included this is very much Facebook / X / Instagram/ TikTok to be covered is my understanding.
this is surprising
are any Cadets using FB anymore?
i’m certain 50% of my FB friends list predominately use Insta now.
As others have said, FB isn’t open to under 12s, even if they wanted to use it
Cadet Portal Annoucements is the way to go. it is direct, certain no less so than FB. ideal for routine and urgent announcements - and can include “please share far and wide” - it is know there is a NCO Whatsapp group so they can spread the word that way and so the message gets out.
A lot our our cadets do. It is one of the main ways they get to see photos from events.
To be honest though, I’m more concerned with the fact that I, as an adult, may have to hand over my ID to some random third party company to prove that I am over 16 and can continue to use Facebook.
The ban is ridiculous because you can never outfox kids, especially when it comes to computers. All it will do is push them to darker corners of the internet that are completely unregulated , and loads of corporations will have access to people’s ID
We have done that for over a year, they actually talk to each other. Have you got more info on the storage box as we just currently use the office desk. Cheers
We’re allowed cadets on WhatsApp grousp?! We’ve just had to shut down the whatsapp chat and move to signal - something about staff seeing our phone numbers? I thought this was a rafac-wide thing, but apparently not
