High Speed Internet Is Causing Widespread Sleep Deprivation, Study Finds (vice.com) 63
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.
Wouldn't surprise me (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
It's the mostly white/blue screens! (Score:1)
I have my own redshift-like script, that fades both my room's lights and all my screen lights and colors like the sunset and then like a bonfire, until all that is left is glowing coal.
I *automatically* get tired. No need to do anything special.
OK, maybe one thing: ALL forms of communication are faded down too. First, news and "social" media sites. Then instant messengers, and finally, my phone goes to mute, my PC shuts down (although I currently have disabed that), and all lights are off.
The only situation
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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.
Ah, the Royal We.
Speak for yourself, champ. Coffee before anything.
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Buy yourself some blue light blocking glasses.
Television (Score:4, Interesting)
This still must pale in comparison to the loss of sleep due to the advent of television.
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2minutes? Skip the foreplay and you're done in half the time.
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You guys are really slow!
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Please look up when TV programme ended before the digital era.
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My (analog) cable TV channels were 24-hour in the mid-90s. Sure it might be infomercials or reruns of 'I Love Lucy' but they didn't sign off with an Indian head.
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I disagree. With TV, you just watched the shows you liked that came on at regular, specific times. You could only watch so many episodes at once.
With broadband internet, you can watch as many episodes of whatever is out there at any time you want. You can check hundreds of websites and social media accounts endlessly. Seems like the internet is much worse than TV, and the difference is much greater than TV compared to radio/books
Other Data (Score:2)
The android on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
FB (Score:2)
First World Problem (Score:1)
Somehow, I cannot get excited or upset that people with high-speed internet are losing sleep as a result....
Any more than it bothers me that many people in the USA have to make up their minds which car to use on any given day....
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Super cool. You don't care about the story but you care enough to tell us that you don't care.
Wow.
So did IRC, Wbs Chat, ICQ etc (Score:2)
and this was in dial up days.
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Have to stay awake until the download finishes so you can disconnect right away. Back before download managers could do that for you.
I was more sleep-deprived in the dialup days than I was when I got broadband.
I'd comment on this... (Score:3)
...but I need to get in one more game of Overwatch before I go to bed.
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I just exited No Man's Sky Edge, it's 03:09 local time. No, I didn't mean "PM".
60 years (Score:3)
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.
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https://www.kevinrose.com/sing... [kevinrose.com]
https://player.fm/series/the-k... [player.fm]
mp3 [podtrac.com]
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In 60 years we have pretty much destroyed our natural sleep habits.
That is a load of crap. If anything history has shown that humans didn't have natural sleeping habits, at least not since the invention of fire to keep light on after sunset. We have plenty of documentation from figures of the past that some many of them had wildy strange sleeping habits. If anything we can conclude only that what may be "natural" for you is not "natural" for me.
Stop! (Score:2)
Don't give Ajit Pai any more ideas. He'll use this study as an excuse to set the broadband speed in the U.S. back to DSL levels.
By forcing slower speeds on people, they'll be less willing to stay up because of the frustration of waiting for pages to download.
Sounds legit (Score:2)
I remember starting downloads and going to sleep because it would take hours before a couple hundred MB file would finish.
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And then you wake up, bright eyed and bushy tailed with excitement only to discover that the download was interrupted at about 2 hours in...
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And then you wake up, bright eyed and bushy tailed with excitement only to discover that the download was interrupted at about 2 hours in...
Naaah. Usually it failed at 99.9% with no capability to resume, and the format of the file required the last few clusters in order to be usable.
not causation (Score:2)
High speed internet isn't "causing sleep deprivation". High speed internet doesn't force people to stay away or pour cold water on them in the middle of the night.
It is the choice of people to use high speed internet late at night is that causes sleep deprivation.
Nah (Score:2)
I am sure the biggest cause of sleep deorpvation is work
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
High speed internet = DSL (Score:2)
By TFA standards, DSL is high speed internet. It is not about fiber or anything like that. (I didn't read the full paper though, I didn't bother getting through the paywall)
Basically, with very few exceptions, if you have internet at home, it is high speed internet.
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That's what I has in mind too and that's why I thought the article made no sense. My parents' place have 8Mbps internet and it is more than enough to stay up late.
But if we define any thing more than dial-up as "high speed" it suddenly makes a lot more sense. With dial-up, there is no streaming, no real-time gaming, and a page can take several minutes to load so no infinite scrolling facebook feeds.
This is a study about sleep deprivation, not about telecommunications. So it is not surprising that their stan
And fast food makes you fat, we get it. (Score:3)
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When, are we going to lean toward the idea that we are responsible for ourselves
When are you going to realize that this never happened and never will? Most people have mental weaknesses, dependcies, issues. A man is not an island, and this includes me and likely you as well.
Worse offender (Score:3)
In Related News (Score:2)
Too fast, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Doctor: "Bob, you are not getting enough sleep. I'm giving you a prescription for Comcast."
Hmmm (Score:2)
I think it might be the opposite. People who have internet access, but not 'highspeed' access spend more time doing the same tasks. I find that the more reading material, be it kindle based or analog paper based, I have contributes to less sleep than anything else. Just one more chapter...I find also working for an east coast based company, their idiotic insistence at an 08:00 start time, when the user base I support are all 3 hour offset costs me a buttload of time as well.
Internet causes sleep deprivation? (Score:2)
To be loved... (Score:1)
I love deprivation
Clearly this is what the song is about.
I understand now (Score:2)
Meh... (Score:2)
I pulled quite a few all-nighters with my computer when I was a teenager, before I even had dial-up Internet.
Of course a lot of time was spent on dial-up BBS:es, not to mention the telephone bills ...
Long ago I used to wake with a book hangover (Score:2)
...as in.. I'd turn the last page in the book after being up all night reading it, seeing the first rays of light from the sun, and going "...oh...shit... did it again."
Christine. Firestarter. How Much For Just The Planet. The Final Nexus. Rage. Roadwork. Just a small list of books that did this to me. And these were on paper, not some as-of-then-not-yet-invented mobile device.
If it wasn't a book hangover, then it was a video hangover. TAPS playing HBO at 2:30? Yea, i'd be watching it, with school n
ZZZZZZ (Score:2)
You do it to yourself (Score:2)
People with sleep deprivation because of the digitization of the bedroom have only themselves to blame. You can choose not to use your tablet or phone just before you go to sleep.
I went through this years ago (Score:2)
I go to bed and leave the net behind. I run a third party router OS My son also goes to bed at a reasonable time due to the scheduling on all of his devices. Now I only get sleep depravation when there is an outage which I'm happy to say are fewer than ever thanks to multiple routes and better load balancing.