SLEEP IS A COMMUNAL ACTIVITY

Many of us think of sleep as a solitary pastime. This view is often shared by researchers, who tend to study people alone in sleep laboratories. However, there are many reasons to think of sleep in the context of our families and our community.

For example, the majority of adults sleep with someone else, so in order to fully understand someone’s sleep patterns it’s important to think about their partner’s nocturnal habits too. Likewise, children’s sleep patterns can only really be understood when we look at the bedtimes that parents set, and their expectations of their kids overnight.

Our sleep timing changes throughout our lives, with adolescents tending to stay up late at night, and older adults going to bed early, for example. It has been proposed that one advantage of this is to ensure that someone is always awake to help keep an eye out for the wider group – it makes sense to only sleep if we feel safe. In fact, loneliness has actually been linked to poorer sleep. A similar explanation has been provided to account for the genetic differences that are associated with sleep timing (whether we are an early bird or a night owl).

“Many of us think of sleep as a solitary pastime. This view is often shared by researchers… yet the majority of adults sleep with someone else”