Dear 16 year-old me

Another one from the list Marie compiled, a group of people send messages back to their 16 year-old selves to encourage them to be aware of risk factors for melanoma and to take appropriate preventive measures. The idea that people have different preferences at different stages of their life is pervasive across the behavioural literature. There is a sense of regret in the stories that the people in the videos did not have the information provided when they were young. Am open-minded and very interested as to how this message would affect the behaviour of a 16-year old. It will likely create some emotional reaction for anyone watching it. Whether that translates into the behaviours encouraged in the video is a very interesting question. The explicit mention of spreading the message through social media is also interesting and they clearly have received a lot of views (close to six million). How six million youtube hits translates into precise quantities of the behaviours promoted is also very relevant if one was trying to economically evaluate such campaigns.