Sweet Dreams Are Made From Screens
Working through our bedtime dependence on devices.
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If your offspring opt for the same crutch, they willnever achieve greatness.
In 2020,66 percent of peopleadmitted to sleepingwiththeir phones.
In other words, most of the population is likely mainlining blue light before bed while sleeping fine.
Ask British people to explain that!
But then I realized, Who cares?
What is a screen?
This is atypical but perhaps helpful for the experiment.
I sleep less than five hours.
Off the bat, I think I offend her by calling her Janet instead of Dr. Kennedy.
From now on, I decide to call everyone Doctor no matter what.
Im not going to say I support working in bed because I dont, she says.
Always get up and get dressed.
I do not get up from bed, but we move on.
Dr. Kennedy is fundamentally anti-screens.
Movies and TV are not reliable brain washers, she says, especially when there is a dependency.
I dont feel so awesome going to bed after watchingSeveranceorStranger Things, she sighs.
I email Weill Cornells Center for Sleep Medicine to set up a sleep study.
We agree that humans are famously bad at that, and thats where the problems begin.
Are we turning to a screen so that recover from an eventful day?
Because we want something to talk about with our friends?
Because were seeking, as she puts it, a moment of hedonic enjoyment?
The key is that you must be able to recognize when that need is fulfilled.
Then youre likely to have a good experience, and you wont need to force yourself to stop.
But it takes practice.
So the public is still on this kick of Oh, medias bad.
And thats a huge part of the issue.
It might be difficult afterward to come down from that and go to bed.
In the end, she suggests watching whatever you want as long as it doesnt delay your bedtime.
If you are a kid, stop reading this and go to bed.)
The film was described by ourcritic Bilge Ebirias something that will haunt your dreams and ruin your nights.
Burns used to fall asleep to horror movies but now transcendentally meditates.
I dont watch anything before bed anymore, he says.
She says she usually regrets letting me interview her but agrees.
She turns off the app when she feels she has learned enough about a topic.
When Im on Twitter, Im anxious out of my mind, miserable, and depressed, she says.
I leave that part blank as I cant figure out the logistics of measuring it.
A hospital will never call you back.
I never learned about sleep in medical school.
Its a thing that primary-care doctors should be asking about during the annual visit.
He is very anti-TikTok and its scrolly brethren.
From the time that Edison invented the light bulb, sleeping patterns changed significantly.
People started sleeping a lot less.
I ask if he is saying progress is bad.
No, he says, but its decreased the amount of sleep we get.
So whether its good or bad, its here.
I feel as if the Headspace voice is patronizing me specifically.
The clouds of my mind condense and coalesce until my entire mind is one furious black cumulonimbus.
Then I usually have to play some sort of game on my phone.
Its almost like a meditation.
She sleeps fantastically but feels guilty nonetheless.
I definitely feel like Im doing something wrong, she says.
I ask Cory if he hatesThe Officenow.
No, he says.
I ask Olivia what the show is about.
Its about four people that are named Charlotte, Miranda Hobbes, Carrie Bradshaw, and Samantha Jones.
They usually kind of walk around and have breakfast together, I think.
I ask if it helps her sleep, and she nods.
Today I slept 30 hours, I think.
Despite all of this, she prefers a book, duh.
Day 8: Reaching the Limits of Science
I callDr.
Dr. Orzech concedes that, yes, staring at a screen is not the ideal before-sleep scenario.
But the question that Ive always had that we were not able to answer in this study is Why?
She isnt convinced it has to do with blue light.
I thought this was a super-interesting finding, Dr. Orzech says.
Wouldnt any before-bed activity have the same effect, then?
Sometimes reading before bed can keep you awake, she concedes.
Dr. Orzech goes on to explain that sleep studies are fundamentally limited and often unintentionally racist and classist.
But those students might not be typical of everyone, she says.
Theres literature out there talking about how economic status affects sleep.
People who are struggling tend to report poorer sleep.
Is it because they live in noisier neighborhoods?
Is it because they have less regular work schedules?
Is it because theyre lying awake at night worried aboutWhere is my next meal going to come from?
Probably all three of those things at least.
First-generation immigrants are better sleepers than the rest of us, she says in her TED Talk.
The more they take on American lifestyle characteristics, the worse their sleep is.
In public health, this is called negative acculturation.
I blink at my daytime screen.
And Im like, Yeah, but kids are on their screens for eight hours a day.
So even taking the low end of that five to seven minutes, thats 40 minutes less sleep.
Thats a clinically significant difference in sleep.
She adds that she thinks he gets too much press on his studies because theyre so controversial.
Our findings are actually pretty consistent.
He denies the charge but confirms that he has always been an incredible sleeper.
In fact, the main disrupter of his sleep is me.
But you also make me sleep better because I feel loved, he says, which is cute.
I wake up with visceral revulsion.
I spend the morning on my phone, investigating ASMR videos as a sleep tool.
Instead, she suggests reading something spiritual or organizing ones kitchen, which sounds insane.
But the primary problem for insomniacs is not their screen use before bed, she says.
The problem is that the entire medical field is in crisis.
Insurance is dictating care, Dr. Krieger explains.
Many doctors from my generation are retiring and quitting because it is very hard to cope, she says.
The system has really gone haywire.
So its not that insomnia was necessarily jeopardizing their life, Dr. Krieger says.
People want their sleep to be efficient, which is a huge part of the problem.
So were driving ourselves insane by trying to wrap our sleep schedules around the economy instead of vice versa?
Yes, she says.
We agree that the American empire is in free fall.
I try organizing my kitchen before I go to sleep, which is unpleasant.
And then make a holistic assessment, says Dr. Eden.
Is everybody sleep deprived and stressed out and horribly sad … because of streaming TV?
There are probably some other things going on.
Theres a pejorative judgment there:Oh, youre watchingThe Masked Singerbefore bed?
Thats kind of lowbrow.
Are they going to become a serial killer?
To which she replies, No.
Inspired by Dr. Eden, I playSkyrim, my partners favorite video game, before bed.
Free from shame, I accidentally stay up very late and ruin my sleep, getting only three hours.
I do, however, require cognitive behavioral therapy for my insomnia.
I wake up tired.
