Turn Screen Time into Screen Skills with FilmworQ by MN Awards.
The World Kids are Growing Up (and logging) Into
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Around 70% of young people worldwide are now online, with social media a major part of how they learn and communicate.
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In the UK, 96% of children aged 3–17 watch videos on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
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84% of 3–17-year-olds use YouTube, and around two thirds of 13–17-year-olds watch TikTok videos.
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For many teens, being online is basically a full-time job: 15-year-olds’ total online time has risen to around 35 hours a week, similar to an adult working week.
Future Work Skills
Employers now expect about 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030.
Analytical thinking and creative thinking are consistently ranked among the top skills employers say they need most over the coming years, alongside resilience, flexibility, leadership, social influence and tech literacy.
6 in 10 workers will require training by the next few years, but only around half currently have access to the training they need.
Companies are prioritising training in analytical thinking, creative thinking and AI/data skills - exactly the kind of skills developed through filmmaking, story work and screen projects.
Building tomorrow’s skills in a content-driven world.
MEDIA LITERACY
Online safety and what happens when schools teach it
International assessment data shows that, on average, only about half of students can reliably distinguish facts from opinions in written material.
In the same studies, just over half of students say they have been taught in school how to detect biased or subjective information.
Where schools do explicitly teach how to spot bias and misinformation, students perform significantly better at distinguishing facts from opinions. In some analyses, this teaching explains nearly half of the variation in students’ ability to do so.
Global policy bodies now frame online safety around critical thinking, source-checking, understanding how media is constructed and recognising disinformation, not just filtering or blocking content.
MN Awards:
A Safe Rehearsal Room for Life Online
Why Screen-Based Drama can be the Secret Weapon Against Online Misinformation
Reviews of digital storytelling in education (primary through to university) show that creating media projects improves students’ speaking and communication skills, as well as their confidence.
When students plan, shoot and edit their own stories, they learn to express themselves clearly, ask questions, share their perspective and critique their own work.
Research on students producing their own video and news content finds that hands-on media production strengthens understanding of media-literacy concepts and helps them better recognise misinformation and fake news.
Media education research consistently shows that young people develop the strongest digital and media literacy when they both analyse media and produce it themselves, rather than just being taught about it in theory.
