How Do We Get The Younger Generation Involved?

angore... OMG... ever heard of YouTube?
The younger generation around me does almost nothing but watch YouTube. They aren't interested in "network television" at all. That channel may seem foreign to our "generation", but they are crazy into it.
Easy to circulate it, on demand, over and over again after that. And we've seen that the animation doesn't even need to be good... (I cite South Park on that one).

I mentioned youtube in my post! Putting a video on youtube is just the first aspect. It is getting viewed that is important.

For example, let's take the APS channel on youtube. There are 523 subscribers and only 4 videos less than 4 months old. Most are much older. Most recent ones mostly deal with events at the HQ and not what I call real outreach videos.

The most interesting videos on youtube are "Exploring Stamps" channel. High quality and entertaining..and done by one person. But I am with other comments on trying to focus on older group that more likely get more interested in collecting if they have the gene. You just have to find those that have the collecting gene and then see if stamps interest them.

If you cannot convince those that actually inherit stamps then it shows you the challenge facing the hobby.

I made a series of YouTube 'music videos' a few years back; my intent was 'slip' stamps into something that was a bit more contemporary. Here are a few examples



I was contacted by some folks to see if I could make 'Disney' music with the intent of showing them at the Topical Show in the kids area. So I made a number of Disney ones and they displayed them at the entrance of the kids topical area, here are a few



They asked that I add an intro which promoted the ATA and the Disneyana on Stamps Society, so I re-did them all with the custom introduction you see now (including animating the fireworks). From what I heard back, the kids enjoyed them and everyone was pleased.

About 8 months later I get a notice from YouTube saying there was an issue, at the same time I get a notice saying that I was getting negative feedbacks on them. I look and some has disliked them all and added this comment to each one


Real nice and patently incorrect; I was asked by the ATA and Disneyana on Stamps Society to do them. I contacted the person who I had been working with and she said to just ignore the person, he did not know what he was talking about. I was able to remove the comments and get YouTube to believe me but the negative ratings stand. Hopefully not many people saw his comments and felt I had hijacked or inappropriately used ATA and DoSS attributions.

But this is typical of the kind of push back, snarky, negative crap, and other grief that many of us who have been trying to help our hobby transition to online have experienced. It is what Brix was talking about in his thread. Folks in the peanut gallery (those who have not invested time and money in doing online development) should consider the impact on the motivation of those who are investing time/money in online development before firing off Negative Nancy comments. At the very least, please privately contact the developer with concerns before publicly flaming them.
Don

51stude:

I liked your videos then, and I like them now.

@51studebaker I will show your videos to my 7 year old.Dont get discouraged with the naysayers..You did a great job and keep doing it!

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My compliments to Don for the lovely videos, but I'm with angore.

Anyone who thinks that philately can or should be promoted via YouTube needs to take a hard look at the number of views the existing videos are getting ...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt...Le-E_72TWMLQ ... Linn's "channel" ... free advertising, and look how many views! ... and a whopping 618 subscribers

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK...bnVqj4gEofFw ... APS' "channel" ... free advertising, and look how many views! ... and a whopping 523 subscribers

Even the outstanding successes are hardly breaking the net:

https://www.youtube.com/user/SmithsonianNPM ... Smithsonian National Postal Museum "channel"

https://www.youtube.com/user/royalmail ... UK Royal Mail "channel"

And, both the SNPM and the Royal Mail can promote their YouTube channels to the millions of people who pass thru their doors each year!

If this is the road to the future, we're gonna need a lot more bricks.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

If there were just some way to make viral cat videos relevant to philately....

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... with or without ruining the OG?

I heard about this kids susbcription service to learn about the world from NPR radio. The website is called littlepassports.com . Apparently they sent info and packages about a different country every few weeks to learn about the country. I dont see stamps included but I see coins and other souvenirs. Can APS or ATA partner with them and drop in some stamps to each package?
Info from the website

https://www.littlepassports.com/lit...rld-edition/

First month you'll get our Explorers Kit including:
Our signature blue suitcase
Your very own passport and wall-sized world map
An exclusive collectible Country Coin and coin board
Three fun, super soft animal squishies
A welcome letter from new pen pals Sam & Sofia
Stickers, photo and activity sheet
Plus access to country-themed online content

I think that Little Passports program would be a great place to include stamps. I am sure a couple of large associations would like to be involved and make donations.

And I would like to add this video to the bunch - Stamps: A World of Fun



*** Edited by Staff to add YouTube tags. Please use them in the future. We prefer embedded video. ***

Interesting discussion here...

As a rare 25 year old, I'll offer my perspective on the subject. A lot of the efforts from the older generation come across as hopelessly out of touch. Whenever I see youtube videos from Linn's featuring all featuring men in their 50's with less than 1k views, all I can think of is this:





Admittedly, I started collecting when I was about 6 or 7 when my father introduced it to me. Back then, I basically soaked used stamps from those grab bags at Hobby Lobby. I soon got bored of it and didn't revisit the hobby until I was in my 20s after college.

So what got me to revisit the hobby all those years later? I can tell you it wasn't youtube videos, app games, celebrity pop star endorsements or whatever vapid millennial caricature the boomer generation assigns to us. For me, stamp collecting centers around two themes: 1) Owning a piece of history and recognizing the value of the articles from the past, and 2) The psychological effect of collecting. There's a switch in my brain that gets triggered when I think about targeting the next stamp in my album. There's always another one I don't have. Something to make it better, more complete.

So let's take those two themes and analyze them for a bit.

1) Quite frankly, due to the nature of developmental psychology, I think it's extremely rare (though not impossible) for a young person to appreciate history like an older adult does. It takes many years to truly internalize the notion that society changes, and the past will never return. Any relics from a nostalgic bygone era increase in value for you.

2) This hobby is not cheap. If you want to own high quality stamps, you have to comfortable with parting with some money for a "mere piece of paper". Sure, you can always buy cheap international sticker stamps or used, especially when starting out, but you'll hit a wall soon. Most young folks don't have a lot of money to spare on stamps even if they valued stamps. I didn't seriously start feeding my collection until I got a full time job out of college and had my personal finances in order. Do you really think you can convince someone with $30,000 in student loans that they should invest in a hobby? They'll either say "nah" or "sure maybe in 10 years".

All of this is to say, I don't think we should be too worried. There are some natural limitations to younger folks collecting stamps, but I'm confident that as people age their values will change accordingly. In the meantime, let's not actively drive anyone away from the hobby by mocking millennials or acting desperately out of touch.

What every association, large & small, runs on is volunteer labor.

1) Pick a likely organization, and

2) Join, and

3) Get permission from that organization, and

4) Pitch Little Passports, and

5) Get an allocation from the material donated to that organization, and

6) Make packets, and ship them to Little Passports.

Throwing the idea at the APS, ATA, AFDCS, etc, will only add to the Great Pile of Great Ideas that they are already waiting for volunteers to execute.

Throwing your time at the APS, ATA, AFDCS, etc, will propel you to the front ranks of The Hobby.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who figures that, if you like, you can probably skip #2, and still be welcomed with open arms)

I don't think taking a "shotgun" approach targeting random young people would be very effective. Not sure how exactly how you'd do it, but it would be best to target those specific youngsters who show an interest in things like history and geography, etc. The history aspect is what really gets me. For mere pennies I can own something like a relic of the Free City of Danzig, relics of the vanishingly brief European political entities that cropped up in the aftermath of WWI, or (for a bit more than pennies) the stamps issued for the WWII concentration camp of Theresienstadt, Warsaw Ghetto mail, etc. Few other hobbies offer the opportunity to do this, do it affordably and without taking up a lot of room (well...for most of us, anyway).

Also, though quote-unquote "serious" collectors disdain them, pop culture stamps can be a gateway as well. I sell recent Japan sets on ebay and hands down the best sellers are consistently the pop culture oriented stamps, such as Disney and Hello Kitty, etc. Stamps that reflect more of the traditional Japanese culture hardly move at all in comparison.

I'm stealing this from a stamp podcast I listen to (a great idea in itself to get more young people involved ), but the idea that you can own a "relic of history" is what I think would appeal to the most young people; as a 30-year-old collector, the history behind stamps is what appeals to me most. The thought of owning a piece of history that was printed and used when my grandparents and great-grandparents were in their prime astonishes me, and the ability to acquire it for a relatively small amount of money is even more interesting.