Sit next to any young student deciding where to go next and watch what actually happens. They don’t open a prospectus; they open TikTok, type the college’s name into the search bar, and see what comes up. Call it a vibe check. What surfaces isn’t a prospectus tour; it’s whatever students have posted. That’s the open day now, weeks before anyone books an actual slot. Meanwhile, the official account has no idea and keeps doing what it’s always done: the principal presents a certificate or the science teacher demonstrates a mildly entertaining experiment. It’s fine. It’s also invisible to the people making the decision because a 16-year-old running that search has already correctly worked out that a comms team’s version of college life isn’t college life. This is not a taste problem. It is a trust problem, and it is measurable: Ofcom’s own research finds that virtually every 13 to 17-year-old in the country is on social media, with TikTok and Instagram chief among them. These are not niche channels. They are where the decision gets made, long before anyone fills in an application form. But being a real student is not enough on its own, and this is where colleges will get it wrong. I have the privilege of having a fourteen-year-old brother. Most of what he watches on TikTok has nothing to do with education; it’s gaming clips, pranks and whatever sound is trending. We talk a lot in marketing about ‘stopping the scroll’, and a sincere but flat video of college life doesn’t stand a chance. The students worth backing already speak the platform’s language, the pacing, the humour, the trends, pointed at their own college life. Get that right, and it beats your polished prospectus video, because the audience trusts the person, not the institution. There’s a money argument too. Recruitment keeps climbing faster than funding does: colleges are absorbing thousands more 16 to 18-year-olds every year than the funding model was built for, and every place has to be fought for against neighbouring providers, sixth forms and apprenticeships chasing the same cohort. Spending on generic content that nobody watches isn’t just wasteful; it burns through the budget while a trusted alternative sits unused. One wrinkle worth noting: ministers announced in June that anyone under 16 will be legally barred from holding an account on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the rest, with the rule pencilled in for early 2027. However, if you think teenagers under 16 won’t find a workaround to the ban, I have some magic beans to sell you. You may be reading this and thinking – “but what about safeguarding?” I would hope you don’t think I am suggesting you hand a phone to a 16-year-old and hope for the best. It obviously requires some level of process: written consent from parents and students, a clear line on what can’t be filmed or named, and a staff member who signs off before you hit ‘post’. That structure isn’t the enemy of authentic content. It’s what lets a student sound like themselves rather than a press release. If I were in charge of a college (heaven forbid), I would speak with my media studies department and ask them to build some sessions on creating social media content that feels native to the platform where it will be posted and give them the opportunity to make things. None of this means abandoning your own channels entirely. The job changes: instead of producing content, the marketing team’s job becomes finding the students who already do this well, giving them a bit of kit and a lot of trust, then getting out of the way. Colleges spend a huge amount of energy worrying about Ofsted, funding rates and league tables, and perhaps rightly so. But the decision that determines whether any of that matters happens earlier, in a bedroom, on a phone, at eleven at night. Whoever is trusted and passes the vibe check in that moment wins the enrolment. Right now, for most colleges, that is not them.