The Problem with College Students’ Sleeping Habits

photo from http://collegelife.about.com/od/healthwellness/a/Tips-To-Help-College-Students-Sleep.htm

Ever since I got to college, I have noticed my energy levels have seemed to drop significantly. I seem to always feel tired. I would feel tired in high school too, but it seems to be way worse in college. Why is this?

Obviously a problem with a lot of college kids is that we do not get enough sleep. Sleep is crucial to being healthy. The amount of recommended amount of sleep, on average, is 7-8 hours a night. Many college students stay up late to do work or study and then get up for class around 8 or 9. According to this site, the average college student get 6-6.9 hours of sleep, when most adults need 6-10 hours of sleep a night.

Have you noticed that in your lecture halls you hear so many people coughing? Well a lack of sleep could be a cause of this. The website above says, “Since sleep deprivation can impact the immune system function, our ability to fight off infections becomes more difficult and we are more prone to getting upper respiratory infections, such as cold and flu, and often feel ‘run down.’ That’s because we are! Heart and lung function is adversely affected by lack of sleep and is associated with worsening chronic lung and heart disease and high blood pressure.” I often do not think about a lack of sleep being able to have such big impacts on my body. I knew that my immune system can get run down if I do not get enough sleep, but think most college kids realize the importance of getting enough sleep.

Sleep deprivation can cause more than just physical illness. College kids have a high risk of having a mental disorder. This website shows how prevalent mental illnesses are in college kids. So what does this have to do with sleep? Well, a lack of sleep can make a person who deals with a mental disorder have a harder time coping. You can read more about it here, and how it can negatively affect academic performances as well. The mental illness and sleep deprivation makes it harder to concentrate and remember things. I never put these two things together, but the correlation between the two makes sense.

This is all great to know, but what if you have trouble sleeping? This site gives 7 tips on what to do to help sleep better at night. All the tips are great, but I think there are a few that may be especially helpful to college students. The second tip the website gives is to pay attention to what you eat and drink. It specifically mentions to be careful with nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol before bed because they are stimulants. The sixth tip that it give is also helpful. It is to include physical activity into your day. This is because it can increase better sleep. It does warn about exercising too close to bedtime though, because for some people it will make them too energized. The seventh tip, in my opinion, may be the most important. It is to manage stress. This is a big deal in college, because we constantly have so much on our plates. Managing our time is key here, and learning to cope with stress in positive ways. The website says, “To help restore peace, consider healthy ways to manage stress. Start with the basics, such as getting organized, setting priorities and delegating tasks. Give yourself permission to take a break when you need one. Share a good laugh with an old friend. Before bed, jot down what’s on your mind and then set it aside for tomorrow.” Here are some other healthy ways to cope with stress too.

This article in the New York times talks about a study linking bad sleeping habits to lower GPA. I think it is safe to say that there is enough information for us, as college students, to assess the risks of sleep deprivation. Continuing to have a bad sleep schedule seems to have too high of risks to not try and change our habits to promote to a healthier sleep schedule.

 

6 thoughts on “The Problem with College Students’ Sleeping Habits

  1. Victoria Chelsea Bushman

    This topic is very prevalent in my life, and I think a lot of it has to do with class times. People with earlier class times will most likely have lack of sleep due to getting up so early. In my case, my earliest class of the week starts at 11:15. At first I thought it was great, but it turns out to be the opposite. I find myself waking up later in the day, which causes me to stay up until four in the morning most nights (as if I wasn’t nocturnal enough). It’s a vicious cycle, and hopefully I can put some of the sleep better tips you included into use to get my sleep schedule back on track!

  2. Jack Andrew Guay

    I found your blog to be interesting and a valuable source of information, but personally for me i have found the opposite to be the case. Since i have gotten to college that amount of time i have had for sleep has gone up by several hours. I attribute this to the fact that i was very careful when making my class schedule and that i have very good time management skills and take sleep always as a priority. My earliest class is 945 so the earliest i get up is 845. that means that if i go to be at 1am i can still get almost 8 hours of sleep. On top of that i have very good time management skills so i was tend to get my work done early so i never have to stay up late. This has caused me to go from getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep in highschool to getting 7 to 10 hours of sleep every night in college. Here is a link to a article that talks about how much sleep we need to live a healthy life. (https://sleepfoundation.org/excessivesleepiness/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need)

  3. Qian Chen

    I have to say this blog is all about truths. College life doesn’t only change my sleeping hours, but also my sleeping time. When I was in high school, I couldn’t stop me to fall asleep at 1 a.m.. However, I can still remain energetic at 3 a.m. right here in Penn State – doing works or playing PC games. I know this change is bad for my health, but I don’t know specifically how until I see your blog now. Seems like I should sleep earlier for my own good… I also think that huge campus and busy time-table can also be reasons why we are easily tired in colleges: the increasing distances between dorms and classrooms and the full time table all require us to have more energy for the college life. One of my blog (http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/?p=24993) mentioned that people who have 7 sleeping hours every night possibly live longer also with a better cognition of the world. However, when you sleep seems like not that important for us as long as you sleep enough. So my advice should be considering your own best time schedule when you registering for next semester classes and hope we all can have a more healthy college life!

  4. Caroline Rose Ackiewicz

    I found this post very interesting. I know that I have very poor sleeping habits, but I had not thought about how it could effect me when I’m sick. I’ve currently had a cold for the past couple of weeks. I hadn’t thought about the fact the my sleep schedule could be affecting my health in such a way.

  5. Jared Yale Perecman

    I just posted a blog on the lack of sleep we receive here at college as well. I talked about all of the long term effects of sleep deprivation and how it can be detrimental to our physical and mental health. You focused on the short term effects here at college, while I took it to the long term effects. This website gives great effects of sleep deprivation and I think you will find it very interesting: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/10-results-sleep-loss?page=3

  6. Emily Josephine Engle

    This blog stood out to me because I am currently experiencing being tired all the time. I have always been someone who could function on little sleep and never took naps in high school. Now I seem to always be tired and am wanting to take naps more than ever. Overall, I could really relate to this blog post and provided a lot of helpful insight.

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