It’s intangible and difficult to quantify, but happiness nonetheless has become a burgeoning field of scientific study. The thing about happiness, like sex, is that everyone wants it, especially after the Great Recession emptied our pockets and sent us pursuing pleasures that money can’t buy. This dogged pursuit of happiness has become a movement. See [...]
Mar 09, 2012 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Health and Wellness, Trends | Tags: Andrew Weil, cultural trends, Designing Happiness class, happiest people, happiness, happiness trends, Happy documentary, Happy movie, happy people, psychology, sex, sleep, Spontaneous Happiness, Stanford business school, The Happiness Project, well-being, wellness, world happiness poll | Leave A Comment »
If you’re in your 20s (or were born between 1980 and 1994), you may want to sit down for this. As much as Gen Y’s elders are trying to get a handle on the often puzzling motivations of the younger group, corporate America still doesn’t hold a terribly high opinion of these millennials, dubbing them [...]
Feb 14, 2012 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Youth | Tags: baby boomers, corporate America, cultural trends, employment, Generation Y, great recession, job market, jobs, millennials, self-esteem, self-esteem generation | Leave A Comment »
Whether you’re familiar with the term “creative class,” coined by American urban studies theorist Richard Florida, you know the group we’re talking about. See that lady at your local coffee shop hammering out the next great American novel or the fellow over there in the corner working his Photoshop voodoo on an Apple laptop? They’re [...]
Dec 09, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Media, Technology, Trends | Tags: Apple, coffee shop, creative class, cultural trends, job market, laptop, Music, publishing, Richard Florida, Technology, writers | Leave A Comment »
A mother might get away with forgetting the juice box a time or two, but shudder to think she’d neglect to tuck a note inside her child’s lunchbox before sending him off on the school bus one morning. Otherwise, it’s possible that her kid could be the only one without a syrupy sweet note to [...]
Dec 07, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Health and Wellness, Social Media, Trends, Youth | Tags: bento box, cafeteria lunch, child lunch, children self-esteem, cultural trends, lunchbox, mommy bloggers, nutrition, parents, public schools | Leave A Comment »
The brains of teens who play video games for nine hours a week or more contain more gray matter at the core, says a new European study. The portion of the brain being examined has been connected with addiction in prior research, as it affects the interplay of emotions and behavior, but this was the [...]
Dec 01, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Health and Wellness, Technology, Youth | Tags: addiction, Berlin, brain, cultural trends, gamers, mental health, psychiatry, psychology, science, smartphones, Technology, the mind, video gamers | Leave A Comment »
These days life’s great balancing act concerns not just the demands of work and personal relationships but of media outlets, as the majority of us are guilty of simultaneously checking email or Facebook while watching the tube. And while advertisers are over the moon about what “multiscreening” could mean for their clients—considering that 38 percent [...]
Nov 29, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Health and Wellness, Social Media, Technology, Trends | Tags: BlackBerry, computer, cultural trends, iPad, Marketing, mindfulness, multiscreening, multitasking, simplicity, smartphone, Social Media, texting while driving, TV | Leave A Comment »
File these in the Dumb Criminals Hall of Shame: One drug dealer carelessly complained on Facebook that someone had been “watering down” the strength of the PCP he was peddling—a detail the FBI agent used against him in court. An MS-13 street gang member went hunting on MySpace for a a federal witness he wanted [...]
Nov 22, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks, Social Media, Trends | Tags: crime, criminal activity, cultural trends, Facebook, gangs, police, riots, Social Media, Twitter | Leave A Comment »
The Yearbook Sign-off? Rampant social media use motivates colleges and high schools to eliminate the yearbook—and the handwritten notes inside Are Facebook and Twitter her taking the place of the school yearbook—that 150-year-old, leather-bound time capsule? The answer is a definitive maybe. With so many tweets and Facebook photos pinging between teens and college students, [...]
Oct 31, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: annual, colleges, cultural trends, cursive writing, Facebook, handwriting, high school, publishing, Sarah Palin’s yearbook, Social Media, Twitter, universities, yearbook | Leave A Comment »
Housebound The continuing home-cession is causing an unconventional arrangement to become more common Divorce is hard enough, what with dividing all of your worldly possessions and suffering through custody battles—or hair loss. How about adding continued cohabitation into that mess? Plenty of miserable married couples have talked themselves into eking out a couple more years [...]
Oct 27, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: cohabitation, cultural trends, custody battle, divorce, divorce cake, divorce hair loss, divorced families, marriage, married roommates | Leave A Comment »
A Sizeable Selling Point Supporters and critics weigh in on vanity sizing’s controversial benefits for consumers and clothing manufacturers Does dress size matter? It certainly does for celebrities, whose weight losses and gains are charted in weekly glossies, but those of us who only have unyielding zippers to answer to wrestle with the issue, as [...]
Oct 25, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: clothing industry, clothing manufacturers, clothing size, clothing trends, cultural trends, Dancing with the Stars, Fashion, Kirstie Alley, Project Runway, Tim Gunn, vanity sizing | Leave A Comment »
The College Catwalk More and more college students are banishing sweatpants in favor of statement-making luxury labels That stereotype about the rumple-haired college student who rolls out of bed and into the classroom wearing sneakers and sweatpants is not ringing true these days. Especially along the tree-lined paths of Ivy League campuses, today’s university students [...]
Oct 24, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: Abercrombie & Fitch, campus fashion, college, college fashion, college fashionista, college football, college football uniforms, cultural trends, fashion trends, Ivy League, university | Leave A Comment »
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Relationship Problems Why a full bank account may bankrupt a happy marriage, and other threats to the once-sacred institution Attention, single ladies: There appears to be a serious shortage of marriage-worthy men. A number of factors are at play, including women’s growing nonchalance about traditional marriage. Cold hard cash is a likely [...]
Oct 19, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: careers, cultural trends, divorce, economy, gender relations, gratitude, jobs, marriage, married couples, men, money, relationships, socio-economic conditions, tradition, unemployment, women | Leave A Comment »
A Major Upheaval U.S. college students are encouraged to major in STEM fields to fill empty positions and rev the economy When it comes to the American job market, or lack thereof, there are some troubling incongruities. For instance: Why, with 14 million people pounding the pavement looking for work, do 52 percent of U.S. [...]
Oct 17, 2011 | Categories:Brainsnacks | Tags: college, cultural trends, economy, education, job market, jobs, majors, millennials, STEM degrees, students, Technology, unemployment, university, workers | Leave A Comment »
