Kelley Cours Anderson, College of Charleston and Karen Anne Wallach, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Life in the digital world can be rewarding. It’s convenient to order groceries for pickup, share photographs or music, and keep in touch with family and friends, no matter the distance. However, it can also be draining. The feeling of being constantly “on” and productive has driven people to reconsider their balance in the saturated digital world.

More than 70% of American adults are concerned about how technology affects their mental health and personal relationships. This worry is reinforced through media that point to people’s unhealthy habits with social media and phones.

What to do? There is a fuzzy line between healthy and unhealthy digital consumption. Some folks feel the need to fully disconnect from the digital world to understand this boundary. The idea of digital detoxing is gaining popularity. This practice involves intentionally unplugging from digital technologies in the pursuit of balance and digital well-being. Nearly half of Americans report that they are making a conscious effort to regularly step away from their screens.

But is this attempt enough? It’s no surprise that 62% of Americans confess to feeling addicted to their devices and the internet. Despite people’s best efforts to unplug and strike a balance, research indicates that digital detoxes often fall short.

Digital well-being is subjective. We research technology and consumer behavior. Our recent research studied the digital detox journey, where people take a much-needed break from digital consumption, aiming to uncover what supports or sabotages those seeking digital well-being. Our findings highlighted four key strategies to improve the outcome of this journey toward achieving a healthier digital balance: replacement practices, social bonds, mindfulness and digital well-being as a journey.

1. Finding replacement practices

We found that feelings of withdrawal during a digital detox are quite common. For many, reaching for their phones and scrolling has become such a ritual that they often don’t realize they are doing it. Many turn to their devices when bored or stressed, much like an adult pacifier. As a result, finding an alternative to distract your mind and occupy your hands can be crucial during a digital detox.

These replacement practices often involve hobbies or activities that result in play. As adults, people sometimes forget what it feels like to have fun. By separating fun from your task list and engaging in play for its own sake, you can significantly reduce stress levels and boost your digital well-being.

2. Shoring up social bonds

Humans are inherently social creatures. Indeed, tools such as email, text messages and social media offer ways to enhance social connections. This innate desire for connection, however, combined with people’s reliance on technology, can lead to feelings of FOMO – fear of missing out – and anxiety during a digital detox.

The average adult now spends 70% less time with friends than they did two decades ago. Digital devices offer connection, but pieces of the experience are missing, such as the joy of in-person contact and trust in others that can be difficult to get online. So while we’re a more connected society, relationships suffer and people are more lonely than ever.

Therefore, during a digital detox it is vital to fill your cup with community, whether through existing friendships or by creating new ones. We recommend engaging in a digital detox alongside others, because FOMO may rear its ugly head if your friend pulls out their phone during a night out.

3. Emphasizing mindfulness

In today‘s fast-paced environment, finding a moment to pause can feel nearly impossible. Many experience solitude deprivation, meaning people often don’t have moments to be alone with their own thoughts. Yet, the ability to just be can allow time for reflection, helping you consider what makes you happy and healthy. Finding moments where you can step away – to be still and silent – can provide a much-needed recharge.

With adults spending about 90% of their time indoors, breaking the routine and heading outside can offer a more holistic perspective on both personal and global well-being. In our study, yoga and meditation were common ways that detoxers found moments to become more aware of their own thoughts, which helped foster more intentional behaviors.

4. Viewing digital well-being as an ongoing journey

Ultimately, digital well-being is a journey. It is not a checklist that, once completed, means you are fulfilled.

Unfortunately, a single detox isn’t enough to cure digital imbalance. Instead, a successful detox often leaves people feeling introspective and curious. Our research participants shared that relapses are common, especially if they don’t set and monitor ongoing goals. Importantly, your needs change and evolve over time. In other words, what works now might not be what you need in the future.

Willpower just isn’t enough. We recommend identifying specific goals for yourself related to your own digital well-being. These aren’t productivity goals but goals to be unproductive. The aim is to unplug in more fulfilling ways. Whether planning a weekly game night with friends or taking a 10-minute walk without your phone, making time to unplug is worth it in the long run.

Researchers still have more to learn to help support digital wellness. We should remember, though, that individual differences play a crucial role in this equation, meaning that the journey to achieving digital harmony is uniquely personal. Thus, as people navigate their tech-saturated lives, it’s clear that finding the right balance is a complex, highly individualized process.

The digital detox journey can be challenging, but many people discover it to be rewarding in the end. People are not machines, however, so recognizing your limits and finding ways to reconnect with yourself and others during a detox can significantly enhance your sense of humanity and digital well-being.

Kelley Cours Anderson, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Charleston and Karen Anne Wallach, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Alabama in Huntsville

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alexandra Plakias, Hamilton College

What will the diets of the future look like? The answer depends in part on what foods Westerners can be persuaded to eat.

These consumers are increasingly being told their diets need to change. Current eating habits are unsustainable, and the global demand for meat is growing.

Recent years have seen increased interest and investment in what are called alternative proteins – products that can replace typical meats with more sustainable alternatives. One option is cultivated, or cultured, meat and seafood: muscle tissue grown in labs in bioreactors, using animal stem cells. Another approach involves replacing standard meat with such options as insects or plant-based imitation meats. All of these products promise a more sustainable alternative to factory-farmed meat. The question is, will consumers accept them?

I’m a philosopher who studies food and disgust, and I’m interested in how people react to new foods such as lab-grown meat, bugs and other so-called alternative proteins. Disgust and food neophobia – a fear of new foods – are often cited as obstacles to adopting new, more sustainable food choices, but I believe that recent history offers a more complicated picture. Past shifts in food habits suggest there are two paths to the adoption of new foods: One relies on familiarity and safety, the other on novelty and excitement.

Disgust and the yuck factor

Disgust is a strong feeling of revulsion in response to objects perceived to be contaminating, polluting or unclean. Scientists believe that it evolved to protect human beings from invisible contaminants such as pathogens and parasites. Some causes of disgust are widely shared, such as feces or vomit. Others, including foods, are more culturally variable.

So it’s not surprising that self-reported willingness to eat insects varies across nationalities. Insects have been an important part of traditional diets of cultures around the world for thousands of years, including the ancient Greeks.

Many articles about the possibility of introducing insects to Western or American diners have emphasized the challenges posed by neophobia and “the yuck factor.” People won’t accept these new foods, the thinking goes, because they’re too different or even downright disgusting.

If that’s right, then the best approach to win space on the plate for new foods might be to try to make them seem similar to familiar menu items.

The safe route to food acceptance

During World War II, the United States government wanted to redirect its limited meat supply to troops on the front lines. So it needed to convince home cooks to give up their steaks, chops and roasts in favor of what it called variety meats: kidneys, liver, tongue and so on.

To figure out how to shift consumer habits, a team of psychologists and anthropologists was charged with studying how food habits and preferences were formed – and how they could be changed.

The Committee on Food Habits recommended stressing these organ meats’ similarity to available, familiar, existing foods. This approach – call it the “safe route” – focuses on individual attitudes and choices. It tries to remove psychological and practical barriers to individual choice and counteracts beliefs or values that might dissuade people from adopting new foods.

As the name suggests, the safe route tries to downplay novelty, using familiar forms and tastes. For example, it would incorporate unfamiliar cuts of meats into meatloaf or meatballs or grind crickets into flour for cookies or protein bars.

The sushi route

But more recent history suggests something different: Foods such as sushi, offal and even lobster became desirable not despite but because of their novelty and difference.

Sushi’s arrival in the postwar U.S. coincided with the rise of consumer culture. Dining out was gaining traction as a leisure activity, and people were increasingly open to new experiences as a sign of status and sophistication. Rather than appealing to the housewife preparing comfort foods, sushi gained popularity by appealing to the desire for new and exciting experiences.

By 1966, The New York Times reported that New Yorkers were dining on “raw fish dishes, sushi and sashimi, with a gusto once reserved for corn flakes.” Now, of course, sushi is widely consumed, available even in grocery stores nationwide. In fact, the grocery chain Kroger sells more than 40 million pieces of sushi a year. Whereas the safe route suggests sneaking new foods into our diets, the sushi route suggests embracing their novelty and using that as a selling point.

Sushi is just one example of a food adopted via this route. After the turn of the millennium, a new generation of diners rediscovered offal as high-end restaurants and chefs offered “nose to tail” dining. Rather than positioning foods like tongue and pigs’ ears as familiar and comforting, a willingness to embrace the yuck factor became a sign of adventurousness, even masculinity. This framing is the exact opposite of the safe route recommended by the Committee on Food Habits.

The future of alternative proteins

What lessons can be drawn from these examples? For dietary shifts to last, they should be framed positively. Persuading customers that variety meats were a necessary wartime substitution worked temporarily but ultimately led to the perception that they were subpar choices. If cultivated meat and insects are pitched as necessary sacrifices, any gains they make may be temporary at best.

Instead, producers could appeal to consumers’ desire for healthier, more sustainable and more exciting foods.

Cultivated meat may be “safe-ly” marketed as nuggets and burgers, but, in principle, the options are endless: Curious consumers could sample lab-grown whale or turtle meat guilt-free, or even find out what woolly mammoth tasted like.

Ultimately, the chefs, consumers and entrepreneurs seeking to remake our food systems don’t need to choose just one route. While we can grind insects into protein powders, we can also look to chefs cooking traditional cuisines that use insects to broaden our culinary horizons.

Alexandra Plakias, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Hamilton College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Michael Platt, University of Pennsylvania

As Election Day looms with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump locked in a dead heat, pollsters and pundits are scrambling for clues to predict the outcome.

But what if the answer lies not in political data or campaign strategies, but in the instincts of a primitive part of the human brain?

New research I conducted with rhesus macaque monkeys suggests that when it comes to decisions like voting, people are not nearly as rational as they would like to believe.

It’s easy to associate instinctual reactions – like the fight-or-flight response or reflexively pulling away from a hot surface – with the primitive motive for survival. But humans also have a rational brain that can gather and weigh evidence, deliberating thoughtfully rather than relying on knee-jerk reactions. Why that rational brain seems to be hijacked by primitive instincts in situations where rationality would serve people better is one of the many reasons my neuroscience colleagues and I have been studying rhesus macaques for the past 25 years.

These monkeys are remarkably similar to people genetically, physiologically and behaviorally. These similarities have allowed researchers to make incredible medical breakthroughs, including the development of vaccines for polio, HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, as well as deep brain stimulation treatment for Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders.

My research on candidate preference is part of an overall focus on enhancing scientists’ understanding of the ability to interact effectively with others and to navigate social conflicts, the neural circuits that support it and how these circuits can deteriorate due to disease or external factors like inequality – all to better support those affected by these challenges.

Power of first impressions

Previous research revealed that human adults and preschoolers alike can accurately predict election outcomes after quick exposure to candidate photos. Plenty of evidence supports the idea that our primitive brain drives us to quickly form first impressions based on physical appearance – it was key to survival, after all.

But researchers don’t yet understand why this bias persists. New research with rhesus macaques has provided some answers.

In the study, which is under review at the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we showed monkeys pairs of candidate photos from U.S. gubernatorial and senatorial elections, and they correctly predicted the outcomes based solely on visual features.

Specifically, the monkeys spent more time looking at the loser than the winner. This “gaze bias” predicted not only the election outcomes but also the candidates’ vote share. Monkeys tended to look at the candidates with more masculine facial features – and these were the candidates more likely to win in the real elections. Jaw prominence had a direct relationship with vote share.

Previous research helps explain the monkeys’ gaze bias. When monkeys were shown pictures of unfamiliar but powerful male monkeys, they would only glance briefly at them, presumably because monkeys interpret staring as a sign of aggression. But their gaze lingered when shown a low-status male monkey or a female.

Those preferences were on full display when we showed the macaques photos from the most recent races involving Donald Trump. Their gaze bias, driven by primitive instincts, indicated the winners. The monkeys looked the longest at the Democratic opponent in the contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton. There was less of a gaze bias in the matchup with Joe Biden. And the monkeys looked for about the same amount of time at Trump as at Harris. That means among the three most recent Democratic candidates, based solely on visual features, the monkeys predicted Harris stands the best chance of winning against Trump.

An evolutionary hangover

Our findings suggest that voters instinctively react to cues of physical strength – cues that are equally evident to our monkey relatives. This “evolutionary hangover” illustrates how traits and behaviors that were once essential for survival persist even when they are no longer relevant.

The macaques’ ability to predict winners based on physical attributes alone challenges the notion that humans have evolved beyond superficial judgments in leadership selection. For those who pride themselves on rational decision-making, especially in vital decisions like voting, it’s a startling discovery.

Clearly people’s choices are not based solely on visual cues. But the evidence suggests that such factors could be more influential than you think. When you enter the voting booth, part of your brain might be drawing on ancient instincts, subconsciously evaluating who looks like they could best lead the tribe.

Staying rational, not primal

Raising awareness of these primal preferences is the first step in reducing their influence.

Political campaigns already tap into these instincts by highlighting a candidate’s physical strength and assertiveness. As voters, we can counteract their efforts by leaning into our rational brain’s capacity to understand and assess their policies and experience – something our primitive ancestors couldn’t do.

Techniques for choosing rationally rather than instinctively include exposing yourself to diverse perspectives, actively questioning your assumptions and considering the long-term outcomes of policies. Such deliberate steps toward making informed decisions take on new importance when you understand how your brain can be swayed at the ballot box by outdated preferences.

Of course, voters are not macaques. But the underlying instincts people share with our primate relatives could still subtly shape our decisions.

Acknowledging the role of these ancient cues can help people become more intentional in how they exercise their power in the voting booth. As democracy evolves, so too should humans’ understanding of how to engage with it.

Michael Platt, Professor of Marketing and Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.