Melena Scala
Science News Article Writeup
The article that caught my attention this week was titled, “Insomnia is on the rise—and it’s ruining your social life,” by Hannah Frishberg. It describes how the pandemic has increased insomnia among Americans and how it damages relationships by making you less likely to want to interact with others. Although the article cites data for the claims they make using hyperlinks, I found it somewhat difficult to trace the information they are providing to an original source or study. For instance, the article refers to a study by Matthew Walker which found a correlation between sleep deprivation and being more antisocial. While Frishberg was describing the study, however, I only found a press release by Walker and another New York Post article linked. The other article was about loneliness and didn’t seem to have any citations, since it was mainly describing people’s experiences of loneliness during the pandemic rather than a study. In the press release posted on the UC Berkeley website, on the other hand, I was able to find a description of Walker’s study but it still did not have the direct journal included. Instead, I found it under “Related Links.” The study, titled “Sleep loss causes social withdrawal and loneliness,” describes how a lack of sleep can lead to antisocial behaviors, which ultimately supports the claims in the article about how a lack of sleep can lead to antisocial behaviors. Both the article and the journal describe how the research was gathered by examining well rested and sleep deprived individuals and how close they approached other following their night’s sleep. Ultimately, I did not find the actual information in the article to be inaccurate after reading through the journal, however some of the language used in the article seemed to sensationalize the topic slightly. For example, the first line of the article used the phrase “toxic friend” to describe the effect of insomnia on your relationship with others, which now seems like a misleading interpretation of the sources, since the original studies didn’t say anything about insomnia making you “toxic”, just that sleep deprivation may make you lonelier or less likely to hang out with others.
Sources:
Ben Simon, Eti, and Matthew P. Walker. “Sleep Loss Causes Social Withdrawal and Loneliness.” Nat Commun, vol. 9, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05377-0
Frishberg, Hannah. “Insomnia Is on the Rise – and It’s Ruining Your Social Life.” New York Post, New York Post, 17 Sept. 2021, nypost.com/2021/09/17/insomnia-is-on-the-rise-and-its-ruining-your-social-life-study/.
Yasmin Anwar, UC Berkeley. “How Poor Sleep Can Ruin Your Social Life.” University of California, 22 Aug. 2018, www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/poor-sleep-can-literally-kill-your-social-life.
