'Meet Your Digital Self' explores the digital divide between generations and its impact on young people’s mental health

'Meet Your Digital Self' campaign for Lenovo and Shout! explores the digital divide between generations and its impact on young people’s mental health.

We brought two people’s online personas to life as real-time AI-powered 3D avatars. In a world first, these avatars were capable of having human conversations, meaning a loved one could ask this virtual version anything they wanted to help better understand this side of them.

Young people live two lives. One in the real world. 60% of Gen Z wish they could have difficult conversations with loved ones in the real world. However, they only feel comfortable expressing themselves online, which can lead to mental health issues like anxiety.

Titled ‘Meet Your Digital Self’, the campaign, framed as a social experiment because it was unscripted, is led by two four-minute online films featuring our chosen protagonists meeting their digital selves, and the avatar also interacting with a relative; someone close to them. 

This relative either didn’t know about the participant's online world or didn’t understand it: their career, their identity, their passions. By asking the digital version questions, they started to understand their loved ones better. This incredibly complex technological solution created a genuine human moment. A simple and honest conversation.

The global campaign (UK, US, and Japan) highlights the role that technology can play in facilitating meaningful conversations in the real world and addressing the global youth mental health crisis. The hope is that the campaign starts a conversation between friends and family. But this is extremely difficult for some people. So that’s why we partnered with Shout (UK), Crisis Text Line (USA) and Anata no Ibasho (Japan). They provide a text-based service for young people with mental health issues.