Pre-Industrial

What I found very interesting about this article was that after all the research they did the results still concluded that even with society being so industrialized our sleep patterns haven’t been too greatly affected where they would be deemed not normal. I think that is just crazy, I mean the majority of the hunter-gatherers don’t take naps, they wake up early (some even before sunrise I mean what is that?), and they don’t even have a word for insomnia. Granted they technically still get just as much sleep on average compared to a person who gets adequate amounts of sleep while living in an industrialized society, which may be a factor as to why the results were the way they were.

It was cool to see how temperature and light plays a role in our sleep as well. I will admit that I have heard before that it is harder for you to go to sleep with lights on or while on your phone or let’s say binge watching your favorite show on Netflix right before bed… you know just some examples, not that any of us smart college students would ever do that. But honestly, I find that for me I have to have my laptop or TV on at the lowest volume, it is so hard for me to sleep in complete darkness. But as far as temperature goes I am right with them. The article stated that the hunter-gatherers would likely fall asleep around the time when the temperature dropped at night, I am the same way at home we set the temperature at 72 degrees at night and I still keep my ceiling fan on high to prevent waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat. I prefer to be colder at nights it makes it a lot easier to fall asleep.

I think this article really puts our way of life in perspective. Society is always telling us that the advancement in technology is so great for our future, that it makes things so much better and so much easier for us, and in many ways it is. But after reading this article although the results were way less extreme than I thought they were going to be it still begs the question, is all this technology the best for us? I mean we can already see a growing dependence on it now within the different generations and how it is handicapping us mentally, this article really points out that it might not be in the general public’s best interest health wise either.