In the category of the strange and unusual, believe it or not, medical researchers designed a study to see if cell phone text messaging could increase sunscreen use and believe it or not, it did. They took seventy participants, thirty-five in the control group and thirty-five in the study group. Everybody was given an hour of instruction on why they need to apply sunscreen and how to apply sunscreen and they were all given special tubes of sunscreen that had electronic devices and these devices told the office every time the sunscreen tube was opened. Every day the “study” people were sent text messages and in the text message they were told what the weather was going to be that day and they were also given a little encouragement: “sunscreen use prevents skin cancer, sunscreen use prevents aging, etc.” some kind of a come on message like that. At the end of the study, only 30% of the people who were not sent text messages used their sunscreen daily but 56% of the participants who got the text messages did use their sunscreen daily and in that group two-thirds said they would continue to and 90% said they would recommend it to a friend. So to all of you internet entrepreneurs out there, or the American Academy of Dermatology or the Skin Cancer Foundation or anybody else whose listening, it would be a really cool idea for somebody to start a service like this that sends text messages to remind people to use sunscreen.
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