Be a rebel while you sleep
After watching “The Social Dilemma” I was shocked. Never before in history have human beings been challenged by smart entities that try to have us to be engaged with them for an endless time.
The first thing that came to mind was the human farms from The Matrix. But the intelligent algorithms of tech companies don’t crave our electricity — they feed on our attention. How did we get here? And more importantly, can we rebel and escape?
There was a time when all scientific advancement improved our quality of life, so we developed this romanticized version of progress. However, after nuclear bombs, a pandemic, and climate change, we now realize that technology can be dangerous and surpass our abilities to control it.
Before electricity, humans went to bed early (around 9 pm) and slept about 7 hours, sometimes split into two periods. After light bulbs spread through the cities, having more light allowed us to socialize in cafés, theaters, and bars. We started to enjoy the nights more, sleep a little less, and wake up later.
Seven hours might not seem like much, but it was high-quality sleep because it occurred during the dark hours, in tune with our circadian rhythm. Also, let’s keep in mind that those people usually had to wake up early and work hard just to avoid family starvation. With all the technological progress, one would think we should be sleeping better than our ancestors, not worse.
After delaying our go to bed time, our sleep patterns changed even more with the apparition of TV; it gave us a sense of human contact because we watched other people, heard stories, and laughed.
But it was a one-way communication channel, one where you could not raise your hand to tell your story, one that made you feel connected, even when you were alone in front of a box packed with electronics. On the other hand, it was an activity that could be enjoyed as a group, on a couch in front of the magic box.
In the 1990s, video games and surfing the web started to demand our attention. Many households got multiple TVs that broadcasted endless cable channels. Entertainment became an individual pursuit, but with work and school hours unchanged, the extra time had to come from somewhere — once again, we took it from our sleep. Sleeping more than 7 hours in the darkness of night was not normal anymore. Little did we know that our servitude to electronics had just started.
Some years later, the smartphone appeared. And wow, have those tiny devices and their apps transformed our lives! The experience we got from our digital devices became so important that Apple transformed itself from a tumbling niche company to the most valuable in the world.
Some years later, we added streaming services and artificial intelligence to the equation. Nowadays, every important app or website uses AI to maximize the time you spend using them by creating a highly optimized user profile to serve up recommendations and content designed to keep you hooked.
As the “Social Dilemma” explains, “when something is free, you are the product”. However, I’d argue this applies to a certain degree to digital services we pay for. For example, when you spend more time with your smartphone:
- The social network makes more money from advertisements.
- The streaming service hooks you to their content, so you keep the subscription active.
- The video game entices you to buy digital goods.
- You speed up the time before upgrading to a new smartphone.
But at the same time:
- You sleep worse.
- Your brain rots.
- You get neck pain.
- You get anxiety and depression.
- You age faster.
- You feel alone.
Even for free services, you could be paying these companies a huge price in terms of time and quality of life, and in exchange, we just get more of what hooks us to them. This seems terrifyingly similar to the concept of exploitation of addicts.
Of course, modern devices are also useful and convenient, and there’s nothing wrong with watching the occasional show on Netflix or checking what your friends are doing on their social networks from time to time.
In the same way that, for most people, there’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine every now and then. Personally, I have struggled a lot with my sleep and have seen a great improvement since I decreased my use of digital entertainment and cut off screen use for 2 hours before bed.
With the current omnipresence of AI and recommendation systems, we need to be extra careful. Let’s just say a wine company can not change its flavor or recommend another ten drinks for you to taste immediately after your first sip. Digital services can, and do.
So how do we fight back? We rebel, my friends, we look those companies each night in the eye and say:
- “I do not work for you.”
- “My sleep is a better experience than your content.”
- “I have more important things to do than make you millions”.
- “My body is naturally wired to sleep during night hours”.
- “Going to sleep early is important for my health.”
Then, suddenly, you start to have more time to keep your home in order, do some exercise, socialize in the real world, read a book, have a self-care routine before bed, and get back some minutes to dream about those times when it was not rebellious to sleep for 7 or more hours in the darkness of the night.