Top 5 Tools for Creating Health Habits

Tanya Floreshabits.stanford.edu

Health Habit: Health Habit: Eat More Plants Eat More Plants

eating is almost always a group event

But which technology tools?

mealtimes are events when the whole family, settlement or village comes togetherfood is also an occasion for sharing, for distributing and

for givingsocial interactions help define how and what people eat

Second LifeSecond Life

Second Life is a free virtual world environment where users, called Residents, interact, explore, and meet each other through avatars.

Social acceptance is important in creating motivation for changing behavior. Adding social pressure for better eating in a virtual world can further motivate behavior change.

FlickrFlickrIn addition to being a website for users to share and embed personal photos, this online service is widely used by bloggers to host images they embed in blogs and other social media.

Because your social acceptance is highly based on what you look like, asking users to post photos of themselves on Flickr could create added social pressure to eat better and hence physically look fitter.

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

YouTube could help drive social acceptance through personal expertise videos on tips and tricks to eating more fruits and vegetables. People feel more motivated showing they are experts.

RecipeZaarRecipeZaar

Not only does Recipezaar make the ability of users to eat more fruits and veggies easier, it also drives users to post their own recipes, receive positive feedback in the form of high reviews and in essence motivation through social acceptance

An online community for people who like to cook, the site allows users to post recipes, comments, and votes for other recipes.

BloggerBlogger

By posting personal anecdotes of progress on changing eating behavior, users are motivated by the social pressure to maintain the habits they are trying to create.

Blogger is a blog storage service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries.

Health Habits: Health Habits: Using Social Using Social TechnologyTechnology

SecondLife, Flickr, YouTube, RecipeZaar,

Blogger

For more on health habits, visit habits.stanford.edu

Social acceptance drives eating more plants