Scroll, click, repeat: How advertisers can break the cycle of negative content
The proliferation of algorithm-driven content is designed to keep us scrolling, often at the expense of our mental health. In this piece, Georgina Gellert, director of marketing and people strategy at Channel Factory, explores how advertisers can take greater responsibility in supporting content that promotes well-being rather than harm.
In the digital age, doom scrolling has become the modern equivalent of staring into the abyss – only now the abyss is filled with cucumber recipes and TikTok conspiracy theories. We promise ourselves just five more minutes, but suddenly it’s 2am and we’re knee-deep in a rabbit hole about Raygun’s origin story. Who needs sleep when you can have anxiety delivered straight to your fingertips?
But it’s not completely our fault – we know these platforms are designed to keep us scrolling for longer and longer. And unfortunately, a large part of how these platforms keep us engaged is by showing us negative, divisive and sometimes just downright toxic content. It’s an unfortunate reality that in the algorithm-defined platforms we all spend way more time on than we can even admit, contentious content gets engagement.
We all feed the algorithm. But the difference is, working in media means it’s harder for me to deny that we are far more responsible than we think for the mental health of our audiences.
Reading the results of the recently published Mentally Healthy research made this even clearer. This much-needed survey revealed we still have a lot of work to do to support the mental health of professionals in our industry. It particularly called out the presence of burnout, anxiety and stress from work.
