Young Kiwis deserve so much better from government comms

If you’re a young person in New Zealand, chances are you barely see government communication at all.

And when you do, unless it’s a paid ad, it probably wasn’t designed with you in mind.

Councils and government departments, far from making an active effort to reach all parts of their communities, now operate with such a narrow mix of communication channels that it’s almost impossible to do so.

And we seem to be fine with this situation.

For the past few years I’ve maintained a large database of government social media activity, covering more than 650 government accounts.

Since January 2023 I’ve been tracking channel use, audience growth, some engagement metrics, and the content itself across the main council, government department and Crown agency corporate pages.

A lot has changed over that time, much of it for the better - particularly at the local government level, where both content and strategy have improved noticeably.

Channel use, however, has gone backwards.

Between January 2023 and January this year, government departments dropped from an average of 3.7 social channels to 3.1. Crown agencies fell from 4.4 to 3.7, and councils from 4.6 to 4.0.

Most of this can be explained by the large-scale exodus from X. It became a platform where it was increasingly difficult - and often pointless - for public sector organisations to add value or be involved in the kinds of conversations that take place and work there.

But the end result is that government organisations are now present on fewer platforms overall.

If you consider that for many government departments one of those 3.1 channels will be LinkedIn, and another Facebook, that leaves roughly 1.1 platforms to reach everyone else.

Good luck with that.

Perhaps the more surprising shift is the lack of uptake of TikTok over that same period.

TikTok first hit New Zealand in 2019 and quickly cemented its place as a dominant platform for younger audiences. When Wellington City Council launched the country’s first local government TikTok account back in 2021, it was widely seen as a bold move.

(Credit should also go to the Ministry of Education - New Zealand’s original government TikTokers - whose foresight deserves recognition.)

Since then the platform has exploded. TikTok recently celebrated reaching two million users in New Zealand, including around 60,000 business accounts.

And yet government uptake remains minimal.

There are currently 25 councils on TikTok, but only two government departments, and five Crown agencies.

But this isn’t really about TikTok itself. It’s about whether government communication is actually reaching younger citizens at all - and whether reaching them is even a priority.

Instead, channel choices often seem to be driven by legacy habits, resources, risk and internal convenience rather than maximising audience access. No one is really using Reddit or Snapchat, and even Instagram use is patchy and well behind Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Which brings us to YouTube - perhaps the most interesting and obvious opportunity government organisations have right now.

Almost every government agency already has a YouTube account, and it happens to be the most widely used social platform in New Zealand.

Among younger audiences the numbers are striking. For Kiwi children aged five to fourteen, YouTube is the most-used media platform, with around 69 percent using YouTube or YouTube Kids daily. Whether they’ll still be able to access the platform in the event of a future ban is another story, but the point is that it is extremely popular.

But YouTube itself is also changing. Increasingly, people are watching it on televisions rather than phones or laptops.

In late 2024, TV surpassed mobile and desktop computers as the primary device for YouTube viewing in the United States by watch time.

Research from the UK communications regulator Ofcom also shows British children increasingly heading straight to YouTube when they turn on the TV. Last year, one in five viewers aged four to fifteen made YouTube their first destination on television - making it the most popular starting point for Generation Alpha.

Which raises a tricky question for government agencies: what content could you produce that large numbers of people would choose to sit down and watch on a television?

Outside of organisations like the police or defence force, the honest answer is that very few agencies currently create that kind of content.

The other issue which goes hand and hand with this is, of course, resources.

On this, I hear the same argument all the time: we don’t have the time or staff to produce TikToks or creative video content for additional platforms when we’re barely servicing our existing channels well.

That’s a fair point.

The resourcing conversation is one we probably need to have - although there will be little appetite for it among the “death to spin doctors” brigade.

But it is also a question of priorities. Ultimately, it’s a choice about who government communication reaches - and who it doesn’t.

Across the public sector, vastly more effort still goes into Facebook and LinkedIn than TikTok, YouTube, Reddit and Snapchat combined. Exponentially more effort.

We know there have been huge recent shifts in how people receive and interact with information. And yet our government communications channel mix still looks remarkably similar to how it did five years ago.

Which raises a fairly simple question: should young people expect better from government communications and social media?

In 2026, the answer really has to be yes.