American Dreams: Smart sleep, high-tech beds, and the National Football League

Abstract

Sleep Number became an official health and wellness sponsor of the National Football League (NFL) in 2018, making each active player eligible for a free internet-enabled smart bed. This article investigates the social and digital divides that arise as the NFL and Sleep Number imagine sleep as something “smart” and anchored in technological progress in marketing campaigns. This article argues that while the NFL and Sleep Number package smart beds as empowering and emancipatory, corporate storytelling creates new rest-related obligations and re-constitutes collective understandings of sleep and sleep difficulties along racial, gender, and economic lines. Smarter sleep promotes individualized, market-driven solutions which are at odds with emerging scientific findings that highlight the role of racism and other structural issues in sleep and sleep disparities.