Slashdot Mirror
High Speed Internet Is Causing Widespread Sleep Deprivation, Study Finds (vice.com)
A study, published Friday in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and funded by the European Research Council, suggests that high speed internet access is causing people to lose up to 25 minutes of sleep per night compared to those without high speed internet. From a report: It's the first study to causally link broadband access to sleep deprivation. The so-called "digitalization of the bedroom," defined by our inability to part with our phones/laptops/televisions before bed, has already been linked to various sleep disorders. [...] As the researchers found, high speed internet access "promotes excessive electronic media use," which has already been shown to have detrimental effects on sleep duration and quality. The effects of high speed internet access were particularly noticeable in younger age demographics.
I have had high speed internet since almost 1999 and I can personally say that every place that I have it and have my computer or hand held device attached to it I will not go to bed before 2 AM. But when I don't have access to that and have to read a book, or actually do chores I find myself getting ready for bed by 11 or so.
Also there is of course the simple fact that we almost always wake up and reach for the phone or computer before we even go for the coffee anymore. Kinda sad.
The voices in my head don't like you
This still must pale in comparison to the loss of sleep due to the advent of television.
Better known as 318230.
...but I need to get in one more game of Overwatch before I go to bed.
In 60 years we have pretty much destroyed our natural sleep habits. Kevin Rose had a really good podcast with Kevin Walker about sleep and the dangers of losing it.
longer work hours due to a tight labor market is what's killing sleep. Folks need time for their brains to spin down and the internet does that as well as anything else. Put a tablet in blue light mode and you don't even have eye problems. The trouble is we're putting in 10+ hour days with 1 hour commutes and then spending 4 hours helping our kids with the piles of homework they get and maybe have 1 or 2 hours to ourselves if we're lucky. That's not enough time to spin down.
People are about twice as productive as they were 60 years ago. That's not all chalked up to machines & computers. A lot of that is just plain less downtime all around. Hell, computers make it possible to track and eliminate your downtime. Look at Amazon. They have pedometers on their employees. I knew a buddy of mine that got a cushy job going around satellite TV users homes to check if they were pirating the signal (lots were and didn't know it because some random guy from the "cable company" would sell them a card). His job was to make them go legit and maybe show them how to order pay-per-view. Computers showed the company how much revenue the company made off the scheme and it was less than the employees cost. He was fired soon after. Or take Sega of America. They stopped advertising in print magazines years ago because data analytics showed it wasn't worth it. Good for Sega but not for all the video game mags that closed shop.
We're all working way, way too hard. That's what's costing us sleep. Not the crap we do at night to try and settle down enough to sleep.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When, are we going to lean toward the idea that we are responsible for ourselves rather than trying to blame something, someone, etc for everything that we do or every problem that we encounter? At some point we have to show personal responsibility and say maybe it isn't this thing that causes the problem, maybe it's what I choose to do with it or how I choose to use it. Sure, if you eat 10 cheeseburgers you get fat, but if you eat one or two, no so much .... and just like that, you have the capacity to turn off your internet connected devices.
I have a great news: electricity caused more sleep deprivation than broadband does. And mastering fire had a huge impact, too.
Doctor: "Bob, you are not getting enough sleep. I'm giving you a prescription for Comcast."
Table-ized A.I.