In the modern world, life is hectic. We are up on our feet doing everything that needs to get done except for one of the most important activities – sleep. And no wonder, taking a third of your day off seems daunting. But, this lack of sleep creates more trouble than it tries to solve.
The number of side effects of sleep deprivation is too large to list here. The most serious ones are memory problems, symptoms resembling ADHD, increased risk for cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and even depression. All those years we cut off from our lives and how much we undermine the remaining ones to have a couple hours on our day. Some have even compared it to smoking. It’s hard to overstate how devastating sleeping less can be, and yet we seem to even take pride in it, overlooking the evidence.
The sudden drop in sleep hours is due to many factors. One of them is the rise of electronics. We didn’t know what we were getting into when we were designing electronics, and it seems like the results only appear now. Screen time has been shown to affect the quantity and the quality of your sleep. Couple that with computers and smartphones getting faster and more useful, enticing people to spend more time with them, the potential seems clear.
Another thing that contributes a lot is the cultural influence. A common view that sleeping the correct 7-9 hours a day for adults is a sign of laziness and that sleeping below 6 hours is a sign of productive successful people deters individuals from getting their much-needed sleep. The appalling result is people doing serious damage to their body every single day, getting a pat on the back for it and feeling proud of themselves for their feat.
Fixing this problem starts with the individual since uprooting a people’s view and making electronics disappear seems implausible. What every person needs to do to combat this phenomenon is to take care of himself by being informed of the harm being done and methods to promote sleeping more.
All in all, depriving yourself of sleep is unhealthy. Humanity has been hit with the rise of electronics and the culture surrounding sleep time makes the problem worse. Hopefully, awareness will ease this problem.
