19. How Much Do We Sleep? Americans Don`t Know

Derek Thompson begins his essay by presenting two different surveys. The Gallup Survey dictates that the average American sleeps for six hours and 48 minutes per night. The American Time Use Survey says it is eight hours and 42 minutes. The reason for the different sets of data is that one survey measured how long someone stays in bed and the other measured how long they actually sleep. To illustrate the difficulty with accurately measuring hours of sleep, the author describes Elizabeth Kolbert's monitoring of her own sleep. She found out that she stayed in bed for six hours and 42 minutes, but slept only four hours and two minutes. A hypnogram showed that throughout the night, she had briefly awaken 141 times. Data also showed that she stopped breathing eight times and had seventeen "periodic limb movements", which are both common. Thompson concludes his article by criticizing Americans, since they have significantly increased insomnia diagnoses and quintupled medical doses over the years, despite data revealing that all these attempts only add an average of 20 minutes in total sleep time.

The article has moments when the author successfully uses research to support his ideas, but it also has moments when backup information is very poorly used. Thompson begins by presenting the sets of data from the two surveys. The author does use the information to support his claims, but it seems as if he presents too much information, since he does not explain all of it. In the fifth paragraph, Thompson includes Elizabeth Kolbert's account of her sleep monitoring. He does include this so it can support the ideas presented in the following paragraph, but, once again, it seems as if the author could have included less information. He has merely taken a section off from Elizabeth Kolbert's essay and it makes up more than half of his own article. The last two paragraphs, however, are the most confusing. They talk about how insomnia treatment is not aiding Americans significantly enough in gaining extra hours of sleep. This last section is confusing, since Thompson does not present much information to backup his claims. Also, it seems as if the section emerges out of nowhere, since there is not any introduction to it or anything connecting it to previous sections of the article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/how-much-do-we-sleep-americans-dont-know/283148/