Marsh

Kira Marsh

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

9/27/18

Topic Proposal: The Sleepy College Student

Introduction/Overview

I will be investigating the shifting attitudes towards sleep among college students in

America and, in turn, what that indicates about the future of sleeping habits, technologies, and

therefore sleeping hygiene.

When I started researching the broader topic of sleep, I was looking for studies on how a

lack of sleep effects college students’ performance on the UNCC library website and stumbled

upon two interconnected college-based results. One was a video set at Dartmouth College. In it,

among other things, students spoke about their attitudes on sleep during the past and/or present.

Students would say things like “I always thought sleep was a waste of time” and “if there’s

something that has to be done…I usually sacrifice sleep.” I would think that this is because they

don’t understand the importance of sleep, but that cannot be the case, as they would then talk

about what happens if they don’t get sleep and why this is important. I recognize this in me in

my friends as well, we know the importance of sleep, but still don’t get enough. Furthermore, the

time crunch students often claim to have cannot be the only reason as well, seeing that, according

to a 2016 study at Technographics, 68% of college students ‘binge watch’ (watch more than 3

TV episodes of) Netflix. This is at least an hour and 20 minutes that could be spent sleeping and

is simply not. This seemed odd to me, yet my other initial finding proved this phenomenon to be

true.
 Marsh

Hannah Peach, who was my psychology professor last semester, conducted a study on

cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral predictors for sleep and health among college students at

the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In her abstract, it is stated that “results

demonstrated that attitudes but not knowledge predicted self-reported sleep duration, self-

reported sleep quality, sleep hygiene behaviors, and actigraphic measures of weekday and

weekend sleep duration.” Putting these two together, I came to the conclusion that our attitudes

concerning sleep, not necessarily our busy schedules, are why ABC News had to report that 3/5

college students have irregular sleep -wake patterns last August, and why, last July,

thegoodbody.com reported striking facts like 97% of teenagers get less than the recommended

sleep, 7 of 10 college students don’t get adequate sleep, and 35% of Americans get less than 7

hours of sleep each night. We understand sleep is important, but to us it is still evidently less

important than most everything else we do during the day. We just don’t care anymore. But that

doesn’t mean that we are stuck with this attitude- attitudes are constantly changing. What I

intend to investigate is why, in what direction, and what that means for college students’ (our

future) sleeping habits/hygiene down the road. The research could be concluded with a personal

stab at what my research says about our urban society’s beliefs, priorities, and/or health effects.

At that point I started to conduct more research on websites like Huffington Post,

Psychology Today, Vice, and even The New York Times to discover how different people viewed

our direction of sleep health. And, by doing the initial and secondary searches mainly through

Google, I also found various miscellaneous sites for organizations focused on the topic of

rectifying what they think is wrong about sleep such as b-society.org, metronaps.com, and

dreams.co. What I found was mainly this: there are different predictions made about what will

happen in the future for sleep as well as different paths taken to rectify this issue all over the
 Marsh

place. Centralized locations of discussion for the topic as a whole only occurs at things like the

annual “SLEEP” conference: The Annual Meeting of Associated Professional Sleep Societies

(AASS). But differing opinions can still be found. I think there are 4 main ones.

On Vice, I found that scientists at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies as

well as sleep expert Dr. Raj Dasgupta believe that, by 2055, most people will be getting by on

only 5 hours of sleep. “Any doctor or researcher worth his salt will tell you we'll be sleeping less

in the future," Dasgupta said. "Total sleep time has been decreasing for years. In 1970s, we slept

7 to 8 hours, presently it's 6 to 7. If you do a little math, in next 40 to 50 years it could be 5 to 6

hours….And that scares me," he added. "Just look at the quotes about sleep that our society

focuses on…it's almost subliminally promoting the idea we should sleep less.” People like these

think we will continue to rush evolution in bad way due to a purely negative attitude on sleep

(i.e, ‘sleep is a waste of time’ attitude).

On The New York Times, I found the nap community. Sara C. Mednick posted an article

on the site stating why she thinks naps need to be implemented in workplaces and then readers

were then prompted to discuss their opinions on the topic. A good amount agreed that a mid-day

nap is a great way to substitute a normal sleeping schedule, as a normal schedule is almost

impossible these days (meaning they know the importance of sleep, but prioritize other things). I

know a lot of people who like to nap as a sleep supplement, including me, my friends, and even a

couple of students in the previously mentioned Dartmouth video. The reality of the nap craze can

be further supported by the creation of airport sleeping pods (found on travelandlesiure.com as

well as blog.sleepinginairports.net) and office sleeping pods made by MetroNaps. I also know

there are more theories on how taking scheduled naps can replace a full night’s rest, but I have

not researched those yet.

 Marsh

Next, there are the people who think schools and businesses need to start later. I

discovered this community on The New York Times as well. On top of a couple comments on the

napping article saying this was a better solution than napping, reporter Alex Williams wrote an

entire article on how our sleep cycles are actually genetically determined, and some people are

really just night owls. Therefore, making schools and businesses start later will give even night

owls the time to sleep, and, as Camilla Kring, founder of B-Society (society supporting and

advocating for this viewpoint) puts it, “support different human chronotypes.” These people feel

there is little they can do to change genetic sleeping needs and that society’s timing is really to

blame for the rising irregularity of sleeping schedules.

Finally, there are those who believe sleeping needs must to be met in the classic way (6-8

hours of sleep per night on a regular schedule) even years from now, and only awareness + tricks

to make sleep easier will change our attitudes to rectify the issues we have now. I see these kinds

of people in my parents/grandparents, and, based on my classes with Hannah Peach as well as

my research on Psychology Today, many psychologists. These people tend to either talk about

how making a strict schedule for your day that includes 8 hours of sleep in a healthy area with no

technology will shift the attitudes of sleep on its own (like Investment Analyst Tara Wong spoke

about in her article titled “How I Overcome College Student Sleep Struggles” on The Huffington

Post) or talk about how future technology will make this easier (like Travelodge had award-

winning Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson do in detail). Pearson says, “In the future, in 2035, sleep

will still occupy a third of our lives. Technology will not change our basic need to sleep but the

way in which we satisfy our appetite for slumber will change markedly.”
 Marsh

Which of these theory(s) are most applicable to our future and whether that’s ‘good’ or

not is an important question that, if answered, can help steer (or re-steer) our sleeping

habits/attitudes in the correct direction.

Initial Inquiry Question(s)

Which of the aforementioned theories on the future of sleep are likely the most

accurate/applicable to the future based on how and why sleeping attitudes/habits have changed in

the past? What does that tell us about our society/future in general (more personal takeaway

portion than research)?

Optional/Alternative: Which would be most ideal (assuming urban society continues to

progress like before)?

My Interest in this Topic

My interest in this topic spans from personal issues with the topic to broader interest for

the wellbeing of the future.

Obviously, I am a college student. My friends are college students, and everyone I know,

including me, sleeps. I tend to sacrifice sleep to do an assignment to the best of my ability, and

one of my biggest struggles in the past and still now is balancing and saying enough is enough. I

had to go to therapy. I got better, but still had to supplement my sleeping schedule with naps.

Lately I haven’t gotten enough sleep prior to my longest class days, and actually just finished

with taking a nap while writing this. The most interesting part is I still usually go on my phone

before bed even if I am majorly behind schedule (and know I’m not supposed to do that). How

can I stop that? Do I really have to? This is an issue I would like to fix, because I know it makes

me moody, unfocused, and unable to get the best out of my education.

 Marsh

It also concerns me that my sister is starting to copy my irregular sleeping habits at 11.

She needs way more sleep than she gets, but I think my mom’s work schedule coupled with the

fact that she has more freedom with her own schedule by taking online classes pushed her over

the edge. Whatever it is, I want to be able to rectify it in the way that makes her most happy.

There is also my best friend. In my opinion, she is spreading herself thin. I think the

number of times she has gotten adequate sleep since I met her 3 years ago could be counted on

one hand. This includes weekends, summers, etc. It’s always something, and I don’t understand

why she never even makes up for it. I am sure her grades and SAT scores would increase like she

wishes if she JUST GOT SOME SLEEP. Maybe I could convince her to get some more sleep in

a more helpful way (i.e, tell her the best way how) with the research I conduct this semester.

Finally, I am interested in investigating this topic because college students are the future.

I know lack of sleep effects satisfaction with school, quality of thinking, and health, but what I

want to know is if this will or can pursue in the future. If it does, the quality and love for

education could go down, future creative thinking can be hindered, and health can be at an all

time low. Can this be prevented? Is there a suitable alternative to a straight 8 hours of sleep to

better fit the crazy schedules of college students? Can we effectively change attitudes on sleep,

(taking account that knowing its benefits does not necessarily mean the student has the right

attitude)? All these questions could be answered either directly or indirectly from finding

answers to my initial inquiry questions.

Next Steps
My next steps will include me researching scholarly articles and/or studies on why sleep

attitudes change over time, preferably based on past changes in sleep attitude. I will start trying
 Marsh

to find these articles in the “PsycARTICLES” database of the UNC Charlotte online library. If I

am not satisfied with my results there, I will move on to other databases that may contain the

type of information I am looking for like “Health Source: Consumer Addition” and, what I think

is a stretch, “Biological Sciences.” I will supplement what I find with data on past and present

sleeping habits/attitudes from Psychology Today, U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). By starting my research in this way, I

can figure out the biggest holes in my knowledge in relation to making predictions about the

future and fill them relatively easily. At that point, I could possibly expand my research to sites

like The New York Times and Huffington Post (while still using everything else as before but the

UBLS) to fill in said holes. For example, I will probably have more thoroughly understand how

the different theories are connected to sleep attitude by looking at personal stories and/or studies.

I will also reach out to Peach and other college students here at UNCC Charlotte

(possibly create a poll on google forms for the college students) so I can ask them what they feel

about each of the proposed solutions, sleep in general, and their predictions of what will actually

happen. This will help me get real-time data from actual professionals/people with whom the

topic is concerned.