Online counseling is becoming more pervasive; this type of guidance method is occurring, and it will likely in-crease within youth work. Studying the phenomena can give relevant resources to the field of digital youth work. The main purpose of this thesis is to research how to provide quality online counseling for youth and to write guidelines for professionals and volunteer workers.

As a facilitator the author researches the themes related to online counseling and enhances discussion through four online group discussions organized for youth workers working in online chats. The aims of the thesis are to find out with qualitative methods how professionals deliver efficiently and effectively online counseling sessions. On a wider perspective, the thesis tries to trace guidelines for counseling young people online, providing em-powerment, direction, guidance and support.

Online counseling has been recently widely studied due to the spread of these kind of services. Due to the uniqueness of digital youth work in Finland, its context and its principles within online counseling and guidance, it is relevant to gain more knowledge about practices and professionals’ perspectives