You get enough sleep last night? Chances are you didn’t. One out of every seven Canadian adults — that’s 3.3 million of us — has trouble nodding off or staying unconscious after lights out.
It’s even grimmer in the States. More than 40 per cent of Americans wake up every day feeling grumpy and sleep deprived — and the experts at the U.S. National Sleep Foundation think they know why.
A study revealed that 95 per cent of the people polled had used some sort of electronic device less than an hour before bed. They’re zeroing in on light-emitting gizmos like TVs, smartphones, computers and video game players — devices a foundation spokesman claims “can suppress the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin” and leave us staring goggled-eyed at the ceiling, all psyched up with nowhere to go. End result: a crummy sleep followed by a sub-standard day.
The consequences are grim too. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, driver fatigue causes upwards of 100,000 vehicle crashes and 1,550 deaths in the U.S. every year.
I spent a few months as a couch surfer during my wayward youth. One of the places I crashed at (but never for long) belonged to a couple who owned three TVs and ran them pretty well 24 hours a day. One of the sets was in their bedroom and it stayed on all night. I could see the gray-blue light leaking out under their bedroom door and hear the murmur of fitness shows, get rich quick ads and on-air diet gurus droning through the early morning hours. One evening I got brave and asked them how come they left their bedroom TV on all night.
“Can’t sleep,” they said in unison.
It was a Homer Simpson moment but I let it pass.
It was also a valuable learning experience. Aside from a clock with a luminous dial sitting on a dresser against the far wall, our bedroom is a technology-free zone. True, there’s a bedside telephone but through some mysterious and totally wonderful Ma Bell quirk, the ringer never sounds. We can phone out, but we can’t hear anyone trying to reach us. If you phone me after I’ve hit the sack, you’ll get a recording asking you to leave a message.
And why not? How is it that we have come to give these gadgets such control over our lives? How come so many people are incapable of sitting on a park bench or relaxing to enjoy a bus ride without first checking in with their BlackBerry or iPod to see if it’s okay for them to take a break?
I’m reminded of the story of Edgar Degas, the French painter and sculptor. Degas, a practicing curmudgeon, had a friend named Jean-Louis Forain who loved new technology. Forain was one of the first citizens to have a telephone installed in his home in Paris. Hoping to impress Degas, he invited him over for dinner, having arranged to have a friend phone the house while they were eating. They were half way through the first course when the phone rang. Monsieur Forain leapt up to answer it. When he returned, Degas looked up from his plate and grumbled: “So that is the telephone. It rings, and you run.”
To paraphrase another Francophone, Ma Bell has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Neither does Sony, Apple, Hewlett-Packard or RCA.
If you’re looking for a reasonably priced, non-electronic device that you can turn to at bedtime which won’t interfere with sleep I can recommend just the thing.
It’s a database recording system, but it’s non-light-emitting, involves no dials or switches, takes no batteries and never needs re-charging. Nevertheless five minutes before bedtime with this baby and you’ll be out like a light — guaranteed.
It’s a book called The Collected Speeches of Stephen Harper.
— Arthur Black lives on Salt Spring Island
