A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP by Jennie Hart

37% Brits struggle to get a good night’s sleep 

It’s not surprising that 37% of Brits don’t sleep well, the surprise is that they sleep at all!

Since time began there have been countless reasons why humans have not sleptsoundly; tribal aggression, violent family members, prowling animals, hunger, cold, heat, and night-time bites from rats, flees and all manner of creatures. My fatherwould relate how at night, he banged his bed to frighten off the cockroaches. Someof these reasons still remain but the modern sleep disturber is technology.

 

‘Leave phones and devices outside the bedroom,’ the media tells us, ‘Digital communication interferes with your sleep.’ Artificial Intelligence (AI), now part of daily life via our smartphones, is an additional concern because AI emits huge amounts of radiation. Tests by a French watchdog showed that Iphone12 emits more electromagnetic radiation than French law permits and this scientific fact extends to most other mobile phones. I met someone recently who sleeps in a Faraday cage to prevent electron magnetic radiation from any device in her home and from her neighbour’s smart-meter affecting her sleep. If a visitor calls, she places their phone in her Faraday cage. She now suffers less from insomnia, headaches and tinnitusand sleeps through the night. A car and an aeroplane are both Faraday cagesbecause, if struck by lightning, the electrical charge is conducted around the metal exteriors, so protecting the occupants inside.

 

Sleep disturbance from attachment to social media is a modern cause of anxiety inpeople young and old, but especially in the young. Relationships play out on these sites, exaggerating and adding to insecurities and lack of self-confidence. Parents find it difficult to police use of technology so even young children can access material that is disturbing and may disrupt sleep.

 

Relationships, emotional and physical violence and predatory behaviour within and outside the family, have always contributed to disrupted sleep. Worry over money, housing, and overcrowding all disturb our peace of mind. Caring for children combined with work pressure in this long hour, low pay culture as well as the climate crisis and global politics, may all result in sleepless nights. Our granddaughter in her final year at university is anxious about everything and cannot sleep. She needs to find a job and accommodation before her student loan ends. She is estranged from her immediate family so struggles emotionally, but she is an example of a young person who’s sleep is disrupted because her past was unsettled and her future is uncertain.

 

Housing is a big concern for many but the quality of housing for the majority in the UK is vastly improved on the conditions described by George Orwell in the thirties.

In his classic work of non-fiction, The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell describes the kind of housing the poor working class were enduring in the 1930s. The publisher, Victor Gollancz, sent Orwell to live among the people of Yorkshire and Lancashire to see and record their living conditions and he describes what he saw in vivid detail. ‘As you walk through the industrial towns, you lose yourself in a labyrinth of little brick houses blackened by smoke, festering in planless chaos round miry alleys and little cindered yards where there are stinking dustbins and lines of grimy washing and half ruinous water closets’. Orwell notes their essential facilities. He records the size of the family, the number of rooms up and down and any features such as a sink and access to clean water. There was rarely hot water and no bath. Many houses belonged to miners who came home black from head to foot, but no builders hadenvisaged that the miner might want a bath.

 

One house he describes near Barnsley has: ‘Two up and one down, a living room with sink. Plaster cracking and coming off walls, gas leaking slightly. Two small upstairs rooms with four beds for 6 adult persons.’ ‘But’ says the tenant, ‘One bed does nowt’, presumably for lack of bedclothes. Room nearest stairs has no door and stairs have no banister. Dry rot so bad, one can see through the floor into the room below’. The tenant again says: ‘Bugs, I keeps ‘em down with sheep dip’. ‘Stone lavatories at end of garden in semi-ruinous condition’. Tenants living in a terrace of back-to-backs facing the street had to walk to the end of the terrace and round the side to access the squalid toilet at the back. In another house Orwell describes‘Indescribable filth in downstairs room and smell upstairs unbearable.’

 

In 2025 in the UK, investigative programmes expose exploitative landlords, people smugglers and child traffickers. Illegal immigrants and children, girls, and women illegally trafficked, often live in appalling housing. Prisons too can be dreadful places.British prisons are regularly assessed for overcrowding but many still are. In some countries outside the UK, prisoners are confined in inhuman spaces; how can those conditions allow quality sleep? The people of Gaza are prisoners because none can leave. They mostly have no home, no bed and little food and water; how do they sleep? And what about the British homeless; can they sleep at night? 

 

A survey by The Sleep Charity reported in the Guardian on June 21 2025 that nine out of ten UK adults experience sleep issues and around 14 million people may be living with undiagnosed insomnia. NHS data shows that over 5 million prescriptions for sleeping pills are written each year and the number of children receiving these drugs has tripled since 2015.

 

In summary, the quality of our sleeping environment does not guarantee a restful night, even though the level of comfort for many has risen. Anxiety has always plagued our peace of mind; the need for a home, a family, a job, a safe place to live,but now the attachment to new technology especially by the young, is an additional creator of a sleepless British population.

 

It's a shame, because everyone loves a good night’s sleep!