Shockingly - research shows that 2% of young people online have the critical literacy skills to tell if a story is real or fake.

With more time than ever being spent by young people on the internet, YouTube EMEA approached Platform13 with a challenge - to engage a 13-15 year old audience with critical thinking and online skills they urgently need to navigate life online.

Crucially, we needed to ensure the official learning objectives from YouTube’s existing “Be Internet Citizens” curriculum (already shared in schools and youth centres) - were strictly adhered to, without any of the advantages of delivering these in person.

Platform13 embarked on an intensive one month sprint - collaborating with a cross-functional YouTube team and the Institute of Strategic Dialogue to deepdive into the existing curriculum and the unique needs of this audience.

Including upwards of 10+ focus groups with the target audience and 20+ 121 interviews with cultural voices across impact, education and youth culture spaces and a bespoke impact measurement framework for the project. This allowed us to better understand how this audience learns and what they are and aren’t receptive to online.