Myths of Modern American Sleep: Naturalizing Primordial Sleep, Blaming Technological Distractions, and Pathologizing Children

• Published in: Science as culture Vol. 24; no. 2; pp. 205 - 226
• Main Author: Wolf-Meyer, Matthew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 03.04.2015
• Subjects: Human nature; Media; medicalization; Myth; Pharmaceuticals; Sleep; Social life; Technology; U.S.A
• ISSN: 0950-5431; 1470-1189
• DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2014.945411

Across different kinds of modern influences on human sleep-from communication and media technologies, to medical interventions and chemicals used to modify sleep and wakefulness, to the organization of social life-some are seen as interfering with human nature. Others, like many institutions, are accepted as natural. This is apparent in the example of school start times, which are widely assumed to be based on an agrarian past. Unlike modern media technologies, school start times are often implicitly accepted as based in nature, and help constitute a sense of a historical primordial natural state in which humans lived in harmony with nature. The presumed naturalness of institutional times stands in opposition to modern media technologies and laboratory-derived chemicals, which are often criticized for being disruptive to our human natures and as having negative impacts on our sleep patterns. In some cases, technology may be serving as a distraction, interfering with a child's sleep, but technology also provides an easy object of criticism, for physicians, scientists, and parents. In doing so, normative social expectations and the institutions that frame them escape criticism in the face of blaming the disorderly behavior of individuals.