U.S. Students Rank Worst in New Sleep Study | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Students Rank Worst in New Sleep Study

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41 pointsedtechdev28 comments

As a University student in the States, I can say that, other than academics themselves, this is mostly propagated by a "I slept fewer hours than you so clearly I work harder look at me and feel bad I'm so stressed kbye" mindset. I have seen many times people waiting to tweet or Facebook something right before bed to prove to the world (and elicit responses) that they were up till an ungodly hour.

It's similar to what happens in adulthood when everyone compares how "busy" they are 24/7 and display it as if it's a badge of pride.

David Hansson (of Ruby on Rails) wrote about this five years ago from a software developer's perspective, and I saw a ton of it in college. It's not just in science/technology majors either, friends in things like education were bragging about all nighters they pulled to get papers done just as much as the compsci students.

Not much has changed, and I have no idea what could be done about this problem. With a few exceptions, everyone who does this could be working much more effectively if they managed their time better and got enough sleep, but there's resistance to doing that because it's considered "normal" to be in the computer lab until 2 AM. And if you leave a 9 it's because everyone else is more dedicated than you are.

It's almost like a more freeform version of a 9-5 workday with people judging you based on how much time you put in, except there aren't any limitations on how long you can spend. And it's friends and peers you're trying to impress instead of your boss. That obsession with trying to impress friends by working all night seems tightly tied to the rise of social networking sites.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1006-sleep-deprivation-is-not...

> I have no idea what could be done about this problem

Um, how about judging people based on the quality and quantity of work/projects/whatever they produce, rather then what times of the day and for how long their rear ends are sitting at 'work'?

Destination > Journey ?

Obviously, but try telling that to all of the world's office managers. Or try convincing college students that staying up all night to get a project done isn't going to impress anyone. Knowing what to fix doesn't mean you can implement it easily.

Agreed. Also part of the issue: staying up all night DOES impress (just not to professors aka no impact on your grade). Students stay up late with friends; complain about 90% of the time; plan fun stuff to do 'after they study'.

And so, in a weird way, pretending to be super-busy has its rewards. And this is part of why the problem even exists.

> Or try convincing college students that staying up all night to get a project done isn't going to impress anyone

Who cares fundamentally what other students/peers are doing? Focus on yourself, your own goals/aspirations, go out and achieve it. Stop worrying about what other people think or do.

That's a solution for an individual person, not the problem as a whole. I don't do it, but you need to convince millions of people that staying up late is a actually problem, and isn't worth doing to impress people.

It's like saying "I've got an easy solution to HIV. Just have all the HIV+ people stop having sex or sharing needles and it'll be gone in a generation." It might be true, but you can't just wish it into happening.

I'd agree with you that not much can be done because it's not like education is advocating this take on studying per se, it's just a relic that gets passed down through the various waves of freshmen every year.

To this end, for those so inclined, Cal Newport is the author of a great book (How to be a Straight A student) that had good ways to force yourself into a schedule that limits your studying time (good thing!) while still giving you the results you want. Lots of willpower required but was well worth the effort for me (took a bunch of failures until I got it right).

Before everyone goes on about college life, the study was done on elementary and middle school students. Not to say that college life and university students aren't sleep deprived. But I feel like the exact result being reported here is even more worrisome. This isn't going sleep deprived while you're (hopefully) adding the academic final touches to your more or less developed brain, this is going sleep deprived while your brain is still coming together.

While the article tries to end on a happy note ("Don't worry! There won't be any permanent damage... if there hasn't been any permanent damage"), I feel that it's still worrisome.

> "Don't worry! There won't be any permanent damage..."

What I don't understand is how we can know that?

"The results of the new comparison have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal." I would read this article with a grain of salt. Although as a university student I can attest to seeing myself and my peers sleep deprived. I make sure I get the sleep I need now.

But they are working through the night to prepare the article for submission.

There's definitely a status component to it. In the US we tend to glamorize working ridiculous hours, not sleeping, and just generally being busy.

There was also the "I never study" crowd, who claimed they coasted by regardless of how much work they actually did or didn't do. For some reason both these groups were/are considered cool and high-status.

When I was in college I tended to study a fairly average amount and took an average course load. I got good grades by virtue of good study habits-most of my study time was spent wide awake and highly focused without internet or distractions. If I got tired/hungry I would sleep or eat, not force myself. I only pulled one "all-nighter" in college, and that was to read a Harry Potter book the night it was released so that I wouldn't see any spoilers.

By only studying when I was in optimal condition, it was much easier for me to retain new material. However, this gave me nothing to complain or brag about, so I quickly learned to act like I was always busy and sleep-deprived, which significantly improved my social life. C'est la vie.

As a current student, I see sleep deprivation in all of my peers. Staying up late is seen as a 'cool' thing for people my age and younger, and I hear stories of kids as young as middle school going to sleep well after midnight on weeknights.

Since college, I have gone to sleep earlier, just so I can stay functional for work and classes; I don't know how these other people do it.

I like staying up late. Even on weekdays, I'm usually up until 1 AM or so. On weekends in college, I recall often seeing the sun come up during the summer.

I thought that was fun, but never thought of it as cool. And while I like staying up late, I really don't like being sleep-deprived.

I really despise the culture wherein sleep deprivation is a badge of honor. And I hate the implicit pressure I feel when I am working with people who wear it as such. It's hard to cite studies showing decreased overall performance when you're confronted with, "I've only gotten 15 hours of sleep all week since I've been working so hard!"

I don't know what to do about it though.

I used to enjoy sleep deprivation. In hindsight, that was me self-treating depression.

Our educational system promotes lack of sleep and needs to be changed. I'm currently a freshman in high school, but have been consistently getting 3-4 hours of sleep each night. School doesn't give us enough time for extracurriculars during the day so they end up eating into the night.

I would be interested in seeing the average school starting times for these countries. I always thought it was ludicrous that high schools had students waking up at 6:30am to get to a 7:15 am math class (Anecdotal evidence: this was my HS schedule junior year).

6:30? lucky :) Back in HS, my bus came at 5:45 AM. Class didn't start until 7:30, and my bus was regularly late (arrival at 7:35 or later).

Note that the school was 15 miles away from my home - just a very long meandering route through suburbia, picking up kids 1-2 at a time.

My elementary school (K to 5th grade) was 8:35am I think, middle school (6th-8th) was 9:05am and high school was 7:55am. Times were mostly stagnated though I think for the bus schedule. Certain AP courses (such as AP Chemistry) started an hour earlier, but that was the only exception. Not sure how they decided who should go to school first though. That has always made me curious.

I'm sure that lack of exercise is also playing a role in this though it was not mentioned. Many kids are quite comfortable sitting at home on the computer, playing online games and instant messaging instead of leaving the house.

Seems fairly obvious to me that cramming and sleeping poorly will lead to the same bad results as any long term code crunch would have.

I wonder if the excessive levels of alcohol consumption in U.S. universities correlates to their lack of a good sleep as well?

I can't imagine that US students drink significantly more than the average Dutch student. Maybe more but not something like 20% more.

Edit: what I meant: students drinking much seems to be universal. Pretty sure that German and Belgium students do the same. International students also party often but that might purely be because they are abroad.

Is there the same sort of binge drinking culture there as in the US, though? Anecdotally, more than half my friends in college would get blackout every single Friday and Saturday (in addition to 4-5 drinks during each weekday) -- it was severe enough that they always got DTs whenever they tried to take a break for midterm/finals studying.

I had friends who regularly made a habit of getting drunk first thing in the morning and all day long. I'm not even sure how it was physically possible now that I am older.

I sincerely hope the entire world is not like this.

I never really mingled with the worst of them but this not something that many students do. Drinking in the weekends and on weekdays sure but regularly getting a delirium tremens (if that's what you mean with DT) made me sit up in my chair.

I've been sleeping poorly for the past 4-5 years. I'm trying to change that over the next three months.

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