For this assignment I decided to try and livestream myself sleeping. I have been suffering from sleeping problem for the past year and as part of my thesis research I've been researching about the difficulties of people getting asleep and I wanted to get a different angle of this struggles I have in a visual way.
COVID-somnia! The prevalence of sleep problems during the COVID-19 pandemic is high and affects approximately 40% of people from the general and health care populations. More than half of Americans reported an increase in problems sleeping since the start of the pandemic and all around the world we have seen a signify higher percentage of people who have trouble sleeping. "Unfortunately, sometimes the harder we try to sleep, the more difficult it is to achieve sufficient, healthy sleep." Is it the mental health state that the pandemic has caused? 51% reported using medication, over-the-counter supplements, or other substances to help them fall asleep, while 68% of those using sleep aids acknowledged that they've been using them more frequently during the pandemic.
The pandemic has created a nation of insomniacs and unfortunately it is still alive. “It’s a problem everywhere, across all age groups,” said Angela Drake, a UC Davis Health clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She has treated sleep disorders and is trained in managing insomnia without medications. “Insomnia was a problem before COVID-19,” she said. “Now, from what we know anecdotally, the increase is enormous.” As the pandemic continues and the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty still follows us, this topic will stay relevant for years to come.
I would like to see the struggles people are suffering from become more visual and animated. I wanted to use the livestream experience to try and see if the data I'm receiving from my watch about a bad night sleep is actually what happens during the night.
The experience of filming myself was very weird, at the first night I did a livestream on Instagram but it didn't recorded more then two hours and it was extremely dark, thank god I woke up a few times during that night so I could start the live again and again.
The second livestream when the light came in was much better, it was completely creepy for me to watch it after but I saw some of the things that I didn't even remember I did during the night.
The second night I tried again to livestream my self via Instagram after changing some of the settings and it worked better but still stopped after 4 hours, this time I set a better lighting for night time.
It was really strange because when I woke up I thought I had a good night sleep but reading the information from my watch I saw that it was really bad.
Going forward I would like to create some sleeping report of other people, kind of like create my own sleeping lab. On the top of asking those people to give me a sleeping report I found a few apps that can help me get the data analyze like the watch is doing such as SleepScore and then give them a form to ask how they feeling about their sleeping and if they will agree livestream of themselves sleeping. I think that the video gave me a lot, those struggles that I see in my watch suddenly became more logic after seeing with my own eyes from the side how I really look when I sleep.
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