She Lies About Her Weight (and other online activities of women)
AdvertisingAge published an interesting article today that highlights the online activity of women. For those of you that think that the Internet is a all-boys club, the stats tell us otherwise. Here are some of the interesting tidbits from the article:
- "Women’s community" was the most visited and fastest growing Internet category.
- 43% of women have visited a video site like YouTube, up from 27% last year.
- When viewing video online, women prefer news clips, movie previews and music videos.
- 54% of women shop online.
- 43 million moms are on the Web daily. They spend an average of 85 minutes online.
- 50% of women consult the Web more than their doctor for health-care information.
- 59% of the women who participated in online dating lied about their weight…by an average of 10 pounds.
When I read stats like this, I begin to ask questions like…
- Does online community play a role in discipleship strategy…particularly for women?
- Will more people watch video if we offer clips rather than just full services?
- Is our online registration process as streamlined as similar online shopping experiences?
- Do we have a role for equipping parents with online tools to encourage discipleship with their kids?
- Will there be a day when churches view the Web rather than a physical location as their primary environment for helping people take steps in their faith journey?
- If I dated my wife online, would I look fat in these jeans?
I know about LifeChurch.tv. Is there another church in the world that’s getting it done online to reach people for Jesus and help them take steps in their faith? I’m not talking about just having a website–I’m talking about having an intentional Web strategy that hits the women (and the men in their lives) that are represented by these stats?
I have been wrestling with some of the same thoughts / ideas as to how to turn our web site into a real set of tools for people in every spiritual season. We have been discussing all kinds of possible online offerings; classes, devotional/ journaling, online small groups, as well as creating a personalized portal experience for users where their spiritual growth plan is customizable, and trackable by the church.
My biggest question is: “how much do we want to re-invent the wheel?” (i.e. social networking sites, etc.) How much of that aspect of “online community” should churches try to create within their own web sites, and how much should we just be out there in the existing communities – Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, etc.
T-mo…love the way you think bro! Personal thought, from one of ‘your questions’ (#4, parents & the web)…ideally, YES! :)
The challenging questions that accompany that thought for me though are…
1) Who is (really) the target audience?
For example…we’ve noticed that with Early Childhood you can get the parents attention from just talking to them (they are more eager & interested in kids experiences), but with Late Childhood the best way to get the parents attention is to ‘hyper-focus’ the kids on something (parents kind of zone out at this age).
2) How often to parents visit the web?
We know that men do and women do, but do parents?…dem is busy folk.
Anyway, love the post (& the thinking)! Maybe some other people have some insight to all this…? :)
In regards to the question about web-based discipleship tools for parents, I think absolutely we should have a role in equipping parents to be spiritual leaders via the internet! I was a public school teacher before entering children’s ministry, and I found that one of the best ways to enhance a child’s performance in my classroom was to discuss strategies that the parents could implement at home throughout the week. Parents were often grateful for some guidance and willing to try new strategies if it improved their child’s attitude, behavior, or academic progress. Most of the time, this change in strategy resulted in vast improvements over the course of school year.
I think parents would love to be provided with tools to take their child’s discipleship to the next level, but often don’t think to ask for them. We see most of our kids on Sundays for a little over an hour, and we focus so much on what we’re doing for that hour that I think we forget about the amount of time they’re spending at home with their parents. What if we could empower parents to teach their kids the same truths about God at home 6 days a week that we are teaching them for an hour on Sunday? How much more growth could we see in the lives of our kids? Of their families?
According to the stats you’re posting about just the moms, Tony, I think the parents would definitely check out a website geared towards providing discipleship tools and guidance. I wonder what the stats are on kids’ use of the Internet? What if the church had a website for kids that was the coolest site out there? How many families could we reach that aren’t coming to church on Sundays? I know this is a lot of questions, but the possibilities of how God could use a web-based ministry fire me up!
Not a “church” per se, but http://www.xxxchurch.com is knocking it out of the park with their recovery stuff online…they really allow those without a lot of specialty staff support to use them to facilitate healing from porn.
There is definitely a market for this type of ministry. Like Justin said, I think there is a lot of value in making a presence in current online communities. Our young adult community host an online community through myspace. In just four week we have had nearly 3000 views, and almost 600 friends. What cool about it is that it has become fully interactive, with people writing questions and comments about the talks (10 min. clips from our weekly teaching series)that are posted weekly. Our friends include Christ followers and porn stars, all seeking answers to life’s toughest questions. I think that this medium of communicating Jesus can not be ignored…not with the number of people worldwide who participate in online communities.