Yesterday in my Professional Orientation to youth ministry class, we talked about contacting students in ministry. We talked about many different ways to contact people, and in class, I asked on twitter for some suggestions on how to contact students during the week.

Of course, the popular way to contact students in the United States right now is on Facebook. I received replies from both Tony and Sara that told me to suggest creating Facebook groups to keep in touch with students. Right now, Facebook has not really caught on in Mexico.

However, Huberto showed me a social network that is taking off in Mexico. It’s called Hi5, and it’s really pretty much like all the other social networking sites that are out there right now. Hi5 is the 3rd largest social networking site in Latin America and has more users than MySpace or Facebook.

It looks a lot like MySpace, in my opinion. Huberto says he uses it to stay in touch with the students in his ministry, and he was worried about the dangers that there are with his students using these sites and putting too much information online, etc.

I thought that this whole conversation was good because it’s interesting to see how different countries’ use of social media evolves. I started a Spanish social network on ning.com for youth workers, which led the youth pastor from our church to create one for the youth ministry at our church.

Social networking is getting more popular in Mexico, and it will definitely be a way to communicate with young people in the future. Right now, it’s cutting edge. I wonder what new thing will be out in the USA when it finally becomes mainstream here?

(image by: dsevilla on flickr)