Why Do We Have Such Terrible Sleep?
The real reason why people have such terrible sleep.
Do you know a research paper published by the National Institute of Health in 2020 revealed that people only average 7.8 hours of sleep per night, leading to health risks such as obesity, heart disease, and depression? This isn’t just an interesting fact. It’s the reason why you decided to read this article.
This article only explores why we have such terrible sleep, as well as correlations between social media, anxiety, blue light exposure and so much more. Before we start, I just want to highlight that all the claims/statistics here are from various research papers from Nature and Science of Sleep, Pew Research Center, Journal of Adolescent Health. I’ve clearly linked all of the research papers, but do your own research before making a decision, and don’t hesitate to correct me.
The Paradox of Sleep
Sleep, from a simple evolutionary point of view, is quite stupid. You are not being productive in any way whatsoever. You could have been mating, foraging, hunting, etc., during those valuable 7–9 hours of time you spend at night sleeping. We are not even safe from predators and other hunters. Evolution is supposed to do the opposite, AKA, to make sure we are as productive as possible. Yet, biology has only shown us that even the most ancient, oldest, creatures possible.
The fascinating thing is, that evolution is smart. It cuts out all the unnecessary, parts of our biology, yet our sleep remains, but it remains for a reason. Sleep in humans is consisted of non-REM sleep, and REM (Rapid Eye Movement)/Dream sleep, but this is not important right now. What is important is my earlier line about predators. Humans are collective group animals, and as such we sleep like that. Perhaps not anymore, but our biology has designed us to be like that.
This is where chronotypes come in, which is biology’s threat defense: chronotypes are basically what we simply call night owls or morning birds. Science has even split it into five sections: extreme morning type, morning type, neutral, evening type, and extreme evening type. This makes sure some people are awake to defend the human collective. This chronotype schedules are mainly genetically determined from birth.
Yet here comes the irony: the society discriminates. The whole world has designed jobs to be primarily for the morning/neutral types, i.e. the 9–5 jobs. Dr. Roxanne Prichard has stated that 15% of the population are morning people, the other 15% are night people and the rest 60% are in between. This leads to a mismatch that impacts their sleep quality and well-being. This is one of the biggest reasons why remote work is more popular: it leads to more control over your own time.
The (Small) Effects of Social Media on Sleep
Social media has been blamed a lot for sleep degradation, which is exactly why I put it below. See, there is a “sleep hygiene”, and social media is like chocolate or ice cream. We love it, yes, but it’s not great for us. But no one says to never eat it ever again. In fact, a study has found that positive social interactions do not actually disrupt sleep as much.
There is a trend of the younger generations sleeping less due to increased screen time, later work schedules, and societal pressures. The main issues with social media use is depression, and blue light exposure, which suppresses melatonin production, delaying sleep.
However, sleep can be improved, just like physical health. This is not an article on how to improve your sleep, but, there a few tips. Try getting more control over time, especially try seeing which chronotype are you, and how many hours of sleep you actually need. If someone calls you lazy, just show them the research papers stating that it is healthy to sleep during the day, and it is healthy to sleep for 9 hours.
Goodbye, and see you in the next article. Leave a comment, clap, or a follow, no pressure (:
