To mark World Mental Health Day the advertising sector’s wellbeing charity NABS has joined forces with brand experience agency Amplify to promote intentional scrolling.
For anyone in the creative or media sectors, the pressure to stay connected and constantly up to date can feel all pervasive. At the same time it can lead to negative and addictive habits which are not helpful.
The project aims to offer an antidote, with a robot that measures social media behaviour and gives users a receipt on their mental health. The aim isn’t to demonise social media, but rather to highlight how we can all scroll more intentionally.
“The DoomScroller is an incredibly exciting prototype from our newly formed innovation practice Amplify FUTURES,” said Futures leader and Amplify innovation creative director Ed Hallam.
Working with Sean Malikides as part of the Futures section of brand experience agency Amplify, the team brought a prototype DoomScroller with which to see a greater cause and effect of digital actions.
By merging the physical and digital worlds, the Doomscroller allows people to see the link between their actions in the digital world and how they feel.
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“We’re thrilled to have collaborated with Sean Malikides to explore our relationships with the digital world, challenging the status quo for social media behaviours and adding real weight to our actions online – these are all principles that make for a FUTURES experiment that puts people at the centre.”
The move comes as part of an experiment series from Amplify Futures. It has collaborated with creative technologists from across a variety of disciplines including AI specialist Eoghan O’Keefe, and artist and creative technologist Tigris Li.
NABS marketing director Lou Thompson said: “Mental health issues continue to rise in our industry with many factors contributing to this, we continue to see this upward trend on our Advice Line, with emotional support being the top reason for contact – representing one-third of the 4,500 calls we took last year.”
“To thrive we need to put conversations and action about improving our collective mental wellness at the heart of what we do. At NABS our purpose is to advance the mental wellness of our industry community. It’s great to have FUTURES contributing towards this.”
