An interesting news article: Avoiding the (sun) burn. A look at human behaviour

This article caught my eye on the weekend – Avoiding the burn: how best to change sunbathers habits.

Yes I thought that putting sunscreen on the beach in neat dispensers thus making it available for free was a good enough idea – they do it at pre-school and schools.

Although I did wonder how it would stay stable in that metal box.

And I wondered how long they would last before being vandalised (how sad is that?)

But what I was most fascinated by was the way the article articulated how Bias, social conditioning and human behaviour work.

The year I emigrated to Australia from the UK a phone call back to home broke the news that one of my mums friends sons had died of skin cancer.   Eleven or so years ago skin cancer wasn’t something that the average English person thought or cared much about and yet here was I, in Australia or ‘melanoma world’ as the scared part of my brain tried to frame it hearing about a fellow English friend who had succumbed to this ‘Australian’ disease.

It felt so wrong.

But then I took the time to think more deeply about my new country and realised that while the risks of getting skin cancer were higher here – higher temps, more sun, stronger sun (thanks to the dodgy ozone layer) that risk was being strongly countered by a deeper level of awareness and grass-roots support.

In the UK when I was growing up there was the feeling that if you didn’t come back from your holiday with a tan the holiday was deemed a failure or disappointment by your peers.  

Here in Australia the days of the bronzed beach bum Aussie are long gone, replaced by a culture that almost goes as far as shaming those who go to the beach to ‘fry’. Yes there are still tanned, scantily clad bodies littering the beach but they now have to share it with bathers in full-on body protection, the whiff of tropical aroma sunscreen and wall-to-wall beach umbrellas.   Kids hear ‘no hat no play’ in every institution they set foot in from pre-school until their high-school graduation and sunscreen is on offer everywhere.

Reading the above article made all of those memories flood back and allowed me to see more clearly how strong our desire to be socially accepted is.

I think that making sunscreen available in public places is a great thing. Sunscreen is expensive, people forget it, run out of it, break it on the way to the beach etc or don’t even think about it so putting it in

people’s faces so to speak could work.  But as the article says it won’t work if people don’t ‘see’ it as a part of their routine.

So hopefully this initiative of Florida’s will start a conversation about safe sun behaviour similar to that which we had here in Australia – Melanoma rates in young Australians is on the decline!

Free sunscreen is only part of the solution but it is a good enough place to start.

Slip, Slop, Slap.

All year for us Aussies 🙂

Picture below is of Cape Tribulation Beach, Far North Queensland. Winter 2015. 28C and sunny.