Urban population in the country is increasingly using mobile applications to fall asleep
Late working hours, social media browsing and binge watching shows at night are often some of the key reasons why the urban population of India is sleeping less. Photo: iStock Recently, when we were putting our son to sleep, he suggested that instead of reading out a story to him from one of his storybooks, we could play the story to him on the phone. He can go to sleep while watching the story. As parents who are constantly struggling in the Digital World, we try our best to monitor the screen time of our son and encourage him to read more.
Taking note of the use of smartphones among children, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has called for banning smartphones in schools to prevent cyberbullying and interferences in teaching. Following this order, several countries such as China, Netherlands and Finland are gradually banning the use of smartphones in classrooms.
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Apart from children getting addicted to smartphones, it is specifically important to prevent children from using smartphones just before going to bed because the blue light emitted from the electronic gadgets makes our brain believe that it is still daytime and not enough sleep hormone is produced to fall asleep or to have a sound sleep.
Indians are one of the most sleep-deprived people in the world, recent statistics revealed. A recent survey showed that one in four Indians suffers from insomnia. Late working hours, social media browsing and binge watching shows at night are often some of the key reasons why the urban population of India is sleeping less.
To help Indians fall asleep, entrepreneur Surbhi Jain developed a mobile application called Neend, which is free and provides its users sleep stories, relaxing music and specifically Nidra (sleep)-inspired stories in Hindi and English to help her users fall asleep easily. Her goal is to expand her application to include content in regional languages as well.
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India is not the only country where the urban population is using mobile applications to fall asleep; other countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, among others, are also grappling with sleep deprivation and have developed sleeping mobile applications to aid their population in having the required amount of sleep. Some sleeping applications such as Sleep Cycle, Calm, Noisli and Headspace have gained significant popularity across the globe.
American sociologist George Ritzer, in his very famous theory of McDonaldisation (2000), argued the model of McDonalds would soon be replicated in everyday human life. The process of the fast-food chain McDonalds runs on the model of efficiency, control, calculability and predictability and promotes individualism. Similarly, we as individuals would also want similar patterns in every aspect of our lives, including intimate moments as well.
By relying on mobile applications to enable us to fall asleep, we are indirectly giving control over one of our most private activities. Similar to our expectations from the fast-food chain, we expect these applications to be efficient and put us to sleep as and when the need arises. Though these applications are being marketed as better sleep providers which will eventually increase the wellbeing of the urban population, nonetheless, it is important to understand that sleep is a natural biological need and more awareness needs to be created to be able to fall asleep organically and not with the help of technology.
The focus needs to be specifically on children and college students who need to sleep on time and complete their minimum eight hours of sleep, if not more, to lead healthy lifestyles. Lack of sleep leads to a number of health problems such as higher chances of cardiac arrest, diabetes, high blood pressure and a weak immune system.
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Realising the need to sleep, private players, particularly the hotel and resort industry, are promoting “sleep tourism” by inviting their customers to sleep-focused stays. Paradoxically, while technology has a negative impact on our sleep, nonetheless, we continue to rely on different applications to be able to fall asleep.
This reliance on phone applications is not necessarily the best solution and it is important that more awareness is created to encourage and motivate the urban population of India to be able to sleep on their own and pay attention to their sleep cycles as well.
Jagriti Gangopadhyay is assistant professor at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE); Srijan Sengupta is assistant professor for Metallurgical and Materials Engineering and Digital Humanities, Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
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