EE

Phonesmart

Educating kids on how to stay safe and be kind online with an interactive storytelling platform.
    Products & Platforms
    Consulting
CHALLENGE

EE, the UK’s leading phone network and the provider of many children’s first phones, have made it their mission to ‘connect for good’. EE believes that children should understand how to use their phones responsibly and be a good digital citizen from day one.

INSIGHT

The age at which kids are getting their first mobile phone is getting younger and younger. In fact, it is now just 10 years old. And by the time they’re 15, 81% of them will have had a potentially harmful online experience.

Introducing the Phonesmart license

Awarded to any kid on any network who completes the online course, the license demonstrates that they’ve learned skills to be safe and kind in their new phone world. To design the curriculum behind the licence, we worked with top child safety organisations including Internet Matters and Anti-Bullying Alliance.

With their help, we identified four key topics to prepare kids for their phone world: Online Hate, Digital Wellbeing, Staying Safe Online, and Digital & Media Literacy.

Driven by storytelling

We turned our four key learning topics into stories, brought to life by a group of characters exploring life with their first phones: the good bits, and the bad bits.
We designed an intuitive and visually-led storybook interface, allowing flexibility with the visual panels to heighten the storytelling. We made sure that the experience let youngsters to engage at their own reading pace, and the five episodes were designed to be accessed on any device.To reach parents, we ran a social and influencer campaign to raise awareness of the course, build the credibility of the EE PhoneSmart licence, and encourage sign-ups.

 
Introduction Meet the gang: Mei, Lily, Jayden, and Arlo, as Jayden gets his first smartphone and starts his amazing adventures through the online world.
Episode 1 A bit of banter turns to cyberbullying when Mei uploads a silly picture of Jayden online. Can the friends fix things when the picture goes viral?
Episode 2 New game craze Zombie Town gets the school buzzin’ and Lily can’t think about anything else. Soon she’s forgotten about the things that matter. Has too much gaming Zombified her?
Episode 3 Arlo has always wanted to be internet famous like his big brother, Zorbsy. But when his skateboarding video goes viral, he gets more than he bargained for.
Episode 4 When Mei gets an invitation to a private gig from her favourite pop star, Lily smells something fishy. But Mei is determined to go. Will her friends risk her friendship to expose the fake?
TESTIMONIAL

"We believe that every child should be safe online which is why we’ve made the course free and available to everyone, regardless of what network they’re on.
The results so far have been brilliant."

Phonesmart testimonials
Kelly Engstrom Brand & Demand Generation Communications Director
RESULTS
  • 4,700+

    Chapters Completed

  • 30,000+

    Minutes of Learning

  • 90%

    Of episodes started are completed

Digitas