This last summer was a great time for me. I worked a full-time job (made a decent wage), went to a concert, a professional soccer game, and socialized with my friends a lot. The only major complaint I had this summer was my lack of sleep. Since I stayed up every night hanging out with friends and had to wake up at 5:30am every morning to get ready for work, I lost a considerable amount of sleep. Most college students, like myself, sacrifice several hours of sleep throughout the school year. Maybe a lot of college students try and make that time up during the summer, but not me. This got me thinking, and also worrying, what will happen if I keep missing a few hours of sleep every night?
I have found an article that discusses how in an ongoing study, teens and college students have been found to consistently get less sleep than what doctors recommend. The article claims that doctors recommend for people to sleep between eight and nine hours every night. The study in the article has been collecting data since 1991 and has found that students are consistently getting less than seven hours of sleep a night; sometimes severely less. I thought that maybe the rise in technology and social media would have something to do with the lack of sleep, but the article goes out of its way to explain that students have been losing great amounts of sleep well before the invention of major social media outlets and the wave of individual technological devices. So if it’s not technology, what is it? The researches in the study seem to think it is a result of many factors, but mostly because today’s teens have such high expectations that it is hard for them to find enough time to do all the things expected of them; including school, jobs, extracurricular activities, and hanging out with friends.
As a young college student, I find this information accurate when compared to my everyday life. What does this mean? Is it bad? The article explains that researches have found that a teen’s lack of sleep may result in stress, decrease in academic performance, daylong fatigue, and obesity. Although I have not yet experienced academic decrease or excessive weight gain, I do often find myself stressed out and fatigued. Then again, it seems to me that colleges have already embraced that stereotype.
This is very helpful but also very common. I feel like all college students talk about how they never get enough sleep trying to juggle all the responsibilities that they have to. Another way a lot of kids lose sleep is binge watching TV shows. I know this has been my problem for years. I’d be sitting in bed at 3 AM thinking “Hmmmmm, should I go to sleep now so I won’t be tired for my 3 hour lab tomorrow, or watch another episode of How I Met Your Mother….” Somehow I always end up getting stuck picking the latter. Here’s (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/power-down-better-sleep#1) a great article on how watching TV and using other electronics can seriously impact your sleep… in a negative way.
Thanks for writing this because I I know that I need to work on a good balance for a healthy sleep schedule. I am currently juggling clubs, school, and a job while making sure I get sleep but I feel like good sleep is slipping away slowly. I know to work on that because of the consequences. I actually wrote a blog post on oversleeping and how that is fairly unhealthy as well. Here is a
link to a site that gave me a better insight on oversleeping:
This post has me worried about gaining an excessive amount of weight because I often don’t get the right amount of sleep. Are there any studies showing what could happen over the course of a year if you’re constantly behind on sleep?
Interestingly enough the average college student gets 6 hours of sleep. I’m interested in seeing the implications lack of sleep will have for our generation. Here is a link explaining the risk of sleep deprivation http://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-deprivation/effects-on-body.