“Socializing” online helps millennials cut down on drinking, save money
Q. One youngster reaches out to accept a 7-centimeter bug specimen into her outstretched hand while another shudders in aversion. Many others lean in with intense fascination. Where are they, and what’s happening? A. They’re at the “cockroach cuddling corner” of the Arizona Insect Festival, says University of Arizona entomologist Cara Gibson in “Science” magazine. Soon all the other kids are gently cupping cockroaches in their hands. It’s a “big, bug science party,” as the magazine headlines it, showing “visitors how insects and their allies—71% of Earth’s described diversity—vary in size, shape, and color.”
As Gibson describes it: “From the beginning six years ago, I have been filled with awe at the connections that can be made by such an event that engages the community,” some 5,000 strong, as they make new relationships with their tiny neighbors. “I smile to myself as I overhear what could be a younger version of myself exclaim, ‘I can’t wait to see if these are in our yard!’” Q. Have you heard that many young adults these days are choosing to stay sober? Why might that be? A. The factors are many and varied, but “it’s impossible to ignore the role of new financial pressures,” says Jon White in “New Scientist” magazine. “Millennials (those born between the early 1980s and mid 1990s) in many places are loaded with student debt, have faced recessions, are living in an era of greater job insecurity, widening income inequality and also rising housing costs.”
Then, too, rather than meeting in a bar or at somebody’s house party drinking alcohol, socializing via group chats can now be done online using laptops, tablets and smartphones. With ready-on-demand cameras, smartphones may also play into younger people’s fear of appearing drunk in photos posted online for all to see. In a recent report, Beer-maker Heineken concluded that “self-awareness and staying in control” are the main motivations for reduced drinking on a night out for millennials.
Consider several other factors: As Western populations are becoming more cosmopolitan, they are incorporating newcomers from cultures where drinking is less common. For example, London with the most diverse population in the UK also has the highest concentration of people who are teetotal (30%). Also, millennials may be experiencing a backlash to the excesses of their parents (born primarily from 1946 to 1980), whose drinking has either risen or remained high in recent decades.
Though it’s hard to determine which factors among many are most critical, White says, “the payoff for maintaining alcohol consumption at a low level is potentially huge in terms of lives and money saved and pressures eased on healthcare systems.” Q. There are different beginnings and endings to many things, true of people as well. What’s one picturesque A-to-Z offshoot for homo sapiens? A. Human life begins with an inhalation and ends with an exhalation, averaging some 500 million breaths of life overall—sustaining our air and bathing our nostrils in a stream of scent-laden molecules, says David G. Myers and C. Nathan Dewall in “Exploring Psychology.” Odor molecules come in many shapes and sizes, so many in fact that it requires an enormous number of olfactory receptors to detect them: Humans have some 20 million of these, a bloodhound 220 million.
The number of scents humans can discriminate is equally impressive. Just as the 26 A-to-Z letters of the English alphabet can combine to form many words, so odor molecules bind to different receptor arrays, producing at least 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) possible odors. “It is the combination of olfactory receptors, which activate different neuron patterns, that allows us to distinguish between the aromas of fresh-brewed and hours-old coffee.”