Stay Up Late & Warning Label

Dangerous Dave talks about a Stanford Medical study that says staying up late is bad for you. Plus, should Social Media have a warning label? The Surgeon General seems to think so.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This, it's uber in the denwith dangerous day. You know. Some
say nothing happens good after two am. Apparently that does include night owls or
are catching up on their emails anddown on plates and nachos. There's a
study out of Stanford Medicine that foundthat past one am, being up that
late is bad choice for your mentalhealth, even if you're a night aul.

(00:21):
Study included seventy five thousand people,and the participants preferred sleep timing is
related to how actually their sleep behavior. They found that early birds and night
owls both have higher rates of mentalbehavior disorders if they regularly stayed up past
one am. That's a counter theirexpectations, which assumes is more about the
quality and duration of sleep, notnecessarily when you get it. This is

(00:45):
the interesting part. When they testeddifferent types of people going to sleep at
various bedtimes, they actually found thatnight people who went to bed late were
the worst. The idea is thatmorning people who are up late now aren't
in the right mind to make gooddecisions. Meanwhile, the night person who's
up late, think I feel greatthat decision I'm making After three am.
Some people are skeptical. One doctorwho reviewed the study said that there are

(01:08):
some weak spots, like most ofthe participants were older, white folks and
people who just self identified as earlybirds or night owls. The mental health
stats were reported data not observed,and they didn't account for people who work
overnight shifts. Negative results also tendto be based on making choices not commonly
wind down behavior like cleaning, reading, or watching TVs. So if you

(01:32):
are a night all, I guesswe take that with a grain of salt.
Just remember when you're going to bed. I'm getting off deeper in the
two. Well, you know,the US Surgeon General has many responsibilities.
We assume most of them are slappingwarning labels on things like cigarettes and alcohol,
and now a new label may beon its way. The current Surgeon
General, Vivic Murthy, wants awarning label on social media like all of

(01:53):
it, I guess. In anop ed in The New York Times,
Mirthy said it's time to require warninglabels on social media platforms, stating that
social media is associated with significant mentalhealth harms for adolescents. It might be
kind of silly, but Murthy saysa warning label would regularly remind both parents
and kids that social media has notbeen proven safe, and there's data that

(02:13):
shows warnings on cigarettes have been effective. Is worth pointing out that ninety five
percent of teens between the ages ofthirteen and seventeen use social media, and
more than a third of those saythey use it almost constantly. Surgeon General
actually doesn't have the authority to addhis own labels. That requires congressional action,
which means right now nothing might comeof it, because even if Congress

(02:34):
did stop bickering long enough to considersomething like this, a warning label would
be significant and get significant pushback fromthe tech companies. Do you need warning
labels on more things other than this? Show what deserves a warning label?
To me again for another episode ofDeeper in the Den with Dangerous Dave light Year.