Today's youth view wrinkles scarier than skin cancer

Despite the fact that cancer is the second most common cancer for 20-29 year-olds, young people are still spending their summer afternoons lounging in the sun, working on their tans.

So, with melanoma rates rapidly increasing, health professionals have been desperate to figure out how to convince teens and 20-somethings to take better care of their skin. Fortunately, they may have found the solution, but it doesn't have anything to do with cancer.

Apparently, most young people are more afraid of wrinkles than they are of melanoma.

Subsequently, one professor is using vanity to try keep college kids out of the sun. By showing them photos of people with heavy wrinkling and age spots, and comparing those images to Polaroids of the students' sun-damaged faces (taken with an ultraviolet camera), the professor reveals the places age sports and uneven pigmentation will eventually appear. As you might suspect, most students are "visibly shocked when they see the photos, and it seems to have an immediate impact."

While the dangers of cancer are still the same -- regardless of whether or not people accept them -- if vanity is what it takes to convince people to protect themselves, then I'm all for this approach.