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Can youth message other youth? – seeing conflicting info
Background:
I’m a long-time Scoutbook user and unit admin. I know my way around Scoutbook.
Venturing is youth-led and we expect Venturers to communicate outside their meetings, which are normally every twice per month. They need to be able to message one another and in the past we’ve used GroupMe and considered Discord, but would rather offer Scoutbook, if possible.
When another Venturer tried to message him from within Scoutbook, clicking on the roster, they got a message saying “Youth can’t click on other youth in the same unit. You currently are not connected to this Scout. Contact the Scout’s parent, guardian, or leaders if you want to connect.”
So as the parent, I logged into Scoutbook to connect my son to other Venturers. I clicked on his profile, then his connections, but I can’t find a way to allow a connection to another Venturer, unless that Venturer is over 18 years old.
At this point, youth can’t see other youth on the roster and can’t message. I’ve read through old forum topics and some imply messaging is possible. Others make it sound like it isn’t.
Can Venturers message Venturers, and if so, what do I need to do to enable that?
This would be true for Scouts BSA units as well as they are youth led.
Our work around is to use the unit forum. It is where the PLC takes notes and follow-up. They can then reply to those messages. They also use their own group chat on phones.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tested the unit forum back in August by posting a message and asking if anyone saw it. I never received any replies, so I took that as a “no.” If it isn’t pushing notification out, folks won’t read them. We’ll test it out some more and see if that works.
Scout BSA is youth-led, but in Venturing it’s even more so… we’re going camping tomorrow and the Venturers planned the whole thing. They planned it, called the park and made the site reservations and all we did as adults were asked some questions to confirm everything is being done in accordance with BSA policies. They did every single thing required for this event EXCEPT sending the emails out to the Crew and parents, because only adults can do that (or so we think).
We just added three new Venturers to our roster and it would be nice to tell the event POC “don’t forget the three new girls,” knowing that the POC doesn’t have to know their email addresses, parents’ info or any of that, because Scoutbook retains it. Instead, Scoutbook seems to protect privacy so well that we go to other apps like GroupMe.
We’re hoping to hear we’ve just missed out on how to do this and it is possible in Scoutbook.
A well run troop runs the same way. Our scouts couldn’t make the reservation as they don’t have a credit card. The entire weekend is planned, food is taken care of, and gear is arrange for. All by the Scouts. Since they have a group text chat, they do the fast comms that way. They RSVP themselves and print the permission slips to have their parents sign. So, the Scouts have gotten used to using the forum for these planning purposes.
The programs are more similar in that reguard, assuming the adults in a troop let the scouts run it. The program side is the different part.
Steve’s suggestion is right. Our scouts haven’t used that yet, but it shows the adults, parents, and scouts that have connected. So, they can message them. I assume if they have set up text, they can use that as well. I will suggest this at our next PLC.
I wonder if it’s similar to the troop side of the house, where the parents have to invite the venturers to connect to their accounts (i.e. parents add an email for the youth). I assume from some of the context in your post that this has already been done, but I figured I would mention it in case I had misinterpreted.
Can the youth message the adults, or can’t message at all?
There is no need to click on the roster to message. It sounds like they are going about it wrong. From the crew page, scroll to the bottom and click send message.
Scouts BSA vs Venturing – glad to hear your youth are doing all that. I’ve never been in a unit where the youth did that. They normally said what they wanted to do and when, but then an adult made the actual arrangement for the campsite or to schedule the activity. Yes, I totally get what you’re saying about the adults stepping back and allowing them to do it. That can be a challenge in Scouting… in parenting… in all things.
Messaging: that is great news that y’all can do that and gives me hope. When I log in as my son and I go to the roster, it shows the leaders (adults) with full names and his fellow youth with first name and last initial but no pics and he can’t click on them in the roster.
When he goes to messaging, he can message leaders only, but no youth. He can’t even message other youth who have their own logins.
I need to do more digging… VERY glad to hear this is possible, but just not working.
To clarify, he isn’t clicking the roster to message. I was explaining that because he doesn’t even have the ability to see details on his buddies in the unit. He can’t see their phone numbers to call them. He can’t see anything other than names and not even the full name.
Messaging: this is the real issue. We have a campout tomorrow. I will ask another Venturer to log in and check if they can message. I did earlier and I don’t think he could and he’s the VP. (My son is Pres). So somehow there’s a connection/permissions issue here where it gives the error "Youth can’t click on other youth in the same unit. You currently are not connected to this Scout. Contact the Scout’s parent, guardian, or leaders if you want to connect.”
Can we set this thread to NOT lock a day after reply? Otherwise, I’ll just have to create a whole new thread when I get back from the overnight campout.
I just had my daughter send a test message. She can message adults, parents, and any youth who have been invited to connect by their parents. Like a message to an adult, it does a good job of enforcing youth protection and copies their parents.
I think your issue might be no Venturers have been invited to connect by their parents.
But, it works fine and our Scouts may now use it going forward.
@jacobfetzer He is NOT clicking the roster to message them. Concur, clicking the roster is NOT needed.
From the home screen, he clicks Administration, then My Dashboard, then Messages, then Send Message.
On the left side, he sees the Leaders (adults) and they are all listed properly. In the middle, there’s a heading for Parents (0) and it’s blank. To the right, he sees Scouts (0) and it’s blank.
He CAN message the leaders but we’re trying to figure out how he can message his fellow Venturers.
I will also have an under-18 Venturer log in and see if it works, but earlier today I asked the VP to check and I don’t think he could message either. But I’d prefer to see that it does or doesn’t work it with my own eyes.
I used to have a test Venturer set up for troubleshooting things like this but that ability went away in Feb, since the test account isn’t in my.scouting.org so it doesn’t have full features any more.
I even went into one person’s connections and searched to add a connection. It only showed those over 18, but even when I clicked to invite, they didn’t show up in the list as connected afterwards.
I’m leaning towards “over-18” issue, but still need to verify. I created a test Venturer account and could see everyone (adult, parents and youth) in the message area.
Still trying to get an actual youth to verify. Here I am worried about their abilities to email using Scoutbook, but they don’t even read or respond to emails anyway!
