16
2009
Oh, the Lure of the Bright Lights
photo courtesy of forbes.com
My phone is going off, my favorite show is calling my name, I am logged onto Facebook and Twitter and I am exhausted- yet still awake in spite of knowing I need to be asleep. Sound familiar to you? For most of us the draw of the “screen” is enough to distract us from the one thing we need the most.
On any given day, the average American will spend a little over 8.7 hours staring at the bright, shiny lights of a screen. Since the average American adult gets less than 8 hours of sleep a night this means we are spending more time watching tv, texting, searching/shopping online, and playing Wii, than we are sleeping. In total, the average American will spend 3,188 hours in front of something to stare at in 2009. If the average adult gets 8 hours a sleep a night (and we all know that is a pipedream), that total comes to only 2,920 a year.
Since they days aren’t getting longer and this number is on the rise, it means one thing – the more time we spend staring, the less time we spend sleeping. With so much going on and being thrown at us, who can sleep?
