ANEMELO'S HANDBOOK: An Innovative Approach Promoting the Adoption of healthy habits in teenagers

How does marketing influence children and adolescents? How to encourage a healthy lifestyle considering the continuous bombing of advertising messages promoting the consumption of junk food and high-sugar drinks?

The European project ANEMELO’s main goal is to increase the awareness of adolescents, through the use of Augmented Reality, regarding the risks deriving from the consumption of junk food whose sugar content increase insulin and trigger addiction.

The project foresees the creation of an Augmented Reality game to teach children and young people how to identify - and not to be influenced by- online advertising. The game is aimed at two distinct age groups: children from11 to 13 and teenagers from 14 to 16 years.
The comprehension of this kind of message for teenagers can be difficult and complex: the marketing of these products often relies on concepts such as success and sociality, themes particularly appealing for adolescents.

Before developing the activities, project partners conducted documental and academic research on topics such as marketing, immersion, and personalization. Teenagers hooked by junk food get gratifications by social media and by metabolic changes.  All these works are in the Handbook.

The Handbook is designed for teachers in order to bring them closer to the project and the use of interactive teaching materials, proposing a complete training methodology on marketing and online advertising, with particular attention to the issue of obesity.

Instructions on how to apply the teaching methodology to ANEMELO's game and how to measure its impact using visual content will be also given to the teachers 
Part of the Handbook will be dedicated to the use of the Augmented Reality content management tool to allow teachers to co-create new games with the students' contribution, using already available images/sounds or creating new ones.

By their side, students will be asked to interpret the role of manager of the food industry, so as to increase their awareness about the tricks used to influence them, encouraging at the same time the adoption of healthy behaviors and habits and the development of the ability to reflect on things.