Like all millennials, I’m continually exhausted by the minutiae of everyday existence. The meetings that could have been emails, the Sisyphean laundry, the mental health walks, and what do you mean I have to decide what to have for dinner every night for the rest of my life? Unfortunately, I’m also chronically online and my algorithm attempts to deal with my ennui with sponsored posts of ever more unhinged products.
These products are almost always presented in influencer style videos that could be mistaken for content, and always touted as “viral” and “sold out”, no matter what they are. The same ad appears multiple times a day for weeks on end, so the product ends up feeling like a fact of life, rather than something I didn’t know existed mere weeks ago.
Take, for example, sleep tape. This is a kind of tape you put over your lips at night to keep your mouth closed so you stop mouth breathing while you sleep. Articles about this “trend” started appearing in 2022, with the New York Times calling it a “simple life hack.” Is it though? As yet another ad begs me to transform my sleep for a happier, healthier me, I hit add to cart and decide to find out.
Night one, Sunday
No challenge is complete without a daily email and the first one helpfully suggests I establish a consistent bedtime, reduce screen time, embrace mindfulness and create a calm environment. Not today, sleep tape, you promised to change my life through tape alone, don’t now bring good sleep hygiene practices into it.
The tape itself comes in individual mouth-sized pieces, a bit like band aids, bright blue, with a small hole in the middle for breathing. It’s recommended you apply it five minutes before bed to “get used to nasal breathing”. The instructions are straightforward but as I apply mine, I immediately have to ride out a wave of panic – I forgot I hated having my mouth covered and this is weirdly reminiscent of an incident with an ex that did not end well. Yikes.
The discomfort passes quickly, but now I constantly feel like yawning. It’s not impossible, the tape’s quite flexible with a texture very similar to kinesiology tape. It does however look ridiculous.
I eventually drift off… only to wake up sometime around 2.30am vaguely panicked, and rip off the tape before I can think. This, I sense, might be a problem.
Night two, Monday
As today’s email expands on the importance of nasal breathing, I marvel how every day marketers find a new thing to give me a complex about. After all, capitalism thrives on creating and exploiting people’s needs and insecurities, and products like sleep tape taps into people’s anxieties and offers a seemingly simple, affordable solution.
Last night’s initial panic is still there on night two, along with the overwhelming urge to yawn. Distracting myself, I scroll Instagram until I run out of my allotted daily screen time and drift off to sleep… only to startle awake four hours later, yet again ripping the tape off before I can think.
Now, I have a history with insomnia when falling asleep, but I usually never wake up during the night – a life skill that has served me very well even on long-haul flights. So, it’s both fascinating and infuriating that this tape is undermining my mediocre superpower.
Night three, Tuesday
Everything feels sluggish and hard today. This fatigue is something sleep tape claimed it would fix, but I suspect most tiredness has less to do with sleep, and more with society deciding working eight-but-actually-more hours a day was the best use of our wild and precious lives…
I grumpily push through the urge to stay up all night watching Mad Men, apply the weird blue not-lips without any residual panic, and fall straight to sleep. Revenge bedtime, I don’t know her.
You’d think that would be enough to sleep through the night. You’d be wrong.
Night four, Wednesday
Congratulations, read today’s email, you’re on your way to building the habit of mouth taping and experiencing the associated benefits!
Most of these benefits are completely unmeasurable, like mental clarity and improved immune function, but if my smartwatch is to be believed, we can measure sleep quality. In the interest of science, I compare the previous week’s average to the sleep tape week to see if there’s been any noticeable change. There has not.
This is tenuous science at best, but so is everything related to sleep tape. While the benefits of nasal breathing are well-supported, there’s limited direct scientific backing for mouth taping specifically as a solution. You’d be hard pressed to find any robust clinical studies, and almost all evidence related to the success of using it was anecdotal.
Nevertheless, I persist with the experiment, and things improve – I sleep through to 4.30am.
Night five, Thursday
Today’s email waxes poetic about REM sleep and its importance to mental health. Preaching to the choir, I’m a firm believer in EMDR therapy. But this does raise another issue with these wellness products – they blur the line between medical advice and advertising, without any real oversight. They aren’t regulated in the way actual medical, or healthcare products are, and yet people are far more likely to rely on these products found on social media than seeking professional medical advice.
This is exactly my issue with the health and wellness products that dominate my sponsored ads. All of it is promoted without any consideration to scientific support, or any potential risks. When these products are then sold as if they’re completely normal, it can lead people to adopt potentially harmful practices without even thinking about how that interacts with their particular health circumstances.
The most notable thing about my fifth night is how normal it feels applying the tape, and I manage to finally sleep through the night. On the other hand, removing it is starting to hurt and I can’t imagine it’s doing my skin any favours.
Night six, Friday
Every day the emails veer a little more into self-help territory, and that really is the crux of all this. This product is just another example of health being framed as an individual responsibility, rather than something impacted by broader societal or systemic factors, like our approach to work or access to healthcare. Because let’s be honest, I sleep soundly and wake up feeling refreshed not because of the tape, but because it’s a Saturday, and I’m beholden to no one.
Night seven, Saturday
Of course I receive an email on the last day that encourages me to order more. Even though I’m very sure the tape hasn’t positively impacted my sleep, I still seriously consider it. I’m already used to the ritual of it, but also a little voice in the back of my head suggests maybe this product could actually transform my life, if only I gave it a bit more time. This isn’t my voice, it’s one that marketers over the world spend millions cultivating. I apply the tape for the last time, have another solid night’s sleep, and unsubscribe from the mailing list.
So, did I learn anything from the challenge?
Only that it makes perfect sense that health and wellness products thrive in the nexus between social media, which relies on trends, and capitalism, which feeds off the constant need for new products. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the health benefits are real, because the product doesn’t have to last… in fact, it’s better if it doesn’t.
Next week, there will be some new miracle cure for what ails me, and I’ll trial it, for the low cost of postage only.
