I’ve had the rare privilege of shepherding thousands of stories as they come to life on the screen —in classrooms, after-school programs, homeless shelters, embassies, boardrooms, film festivals, zoos, in the Weekly Reader, Apple Stores, conferences like SXSW, and in more media labs than I can count.
Let me tell you something you already know—
but may not have said out loud in a while.
Screens are raising our kids.
Now—
before you clutch your pearls and book a cabin in the woods,
let me also say this:
It’s not all bad.
We live in a world where kids can learn to speak Mandarin, learn quantum theory, or start a business—
from their phones.
But the catch:
They can also be sold lies.
Or filtered ideals.
Or half-truths dressed up as breaking news.
Because here’s the thing—
most kids consume media as if it were weather:
Something that just happens to them.
But it’s not weather.
It’s architecture.
It’s made.
Constructed.
Deliberately.
And if kids don’t learn how it’s built—
they’ll never know when it’s being used to build them!
Now, I want to suggest something simple.
Something almost radical, in its simplicity.
Every child should make a stop motion movie before 5th grade.
Not because we’re hoping for the next Disney…
but because, in the act of making it, something magical happens.
They start to see how meaning is made.
They learn that images… become a story… with movement, with sound, with sequence.
They learn that even the smallest decisions—
Where to frame the shot.
When to cut.
What to show.
What to leave out—
They all shape how people feel.
They argue about what makes sense.
They laugh when the props don't work quite right,
They revise when the story doesn’t land.
They are learning the laws of visual communication—
not by being told about them,
but by discovering them.
And that—
that’s inoculation.
That’s the moment they stop being passive observers,
and start being critical creators.
Now, let me say something that might surprise you:
Kids aren’t the problem.
They’re curious. They’re clever. They’re desperate to be seen and heard.
The real gap… is us.
We’ve handed them the most powerful communication tools in human history—
and never taught them how they work.
But we can.
We can right this ship.
We’re not lost at sea.
We just need to update the map.
The good news?
The fix is not complicated.
They don’t need massive budgets.
They don’t need fancy gear.
What they need… is the process.
A structure.
A scaffold.
A place to experiment, revise, and reflect.
That’s why Animating Kids was built.
To give teachers—and their students—an on-ramp into the world of storytelling with sound and motion.
Not just for art class.
Not just for media labs.
But in science, in math, in history—
anywhere there’s something to be explained, shared, or imagined.
We’ve seen this in action.
For over 20 years, we’ve worked on three continents.
We’ve helped tens of thousands of kids—and their teachers—make their very first films.
And what happens next is beautiful.
The teachers say,
“I didn’t think I could teach this.”
And the kids say,
“Can we do another one?”
And something shifts.
The screen becomes a tool—not just a toy.
The classroom becomes a studio—not just a seat.
And learning becomes a story—not just a score.
Now, more than ever, we need children who can see through what they’re being shown.
We need them to recognize jump cuts and camera tricks.
To know how a story is framed.
To know when a soundbite is just that—a bite.
And the way to teach that is not to lecture them about it.
It’s to let them try it themselves.
The fastest way to demystify the media… is to make it.
So let’s start early.
Let’s make media creation as normal as writing a paragraph or solving a math problem.
Let’s hand students the tools of storytelling—
not because we’re training the next generation of influencers…
but because we’re nurturing the next generation of thinkers.
Let’s give every kid the chance to pull back the curtain—
and see how stories are made.
And let’s do it…
one frame at a time.
Bon Animate!
– Joe