The impact of the declining rate of sleep is that almost one-third of U.S. adults now sleeps for less than six hours each night. This is based on a poll of some 400,000 people. The poll, as Science News reports, was conducted as part of the annual National Health Interview Survey. In terms of comparison, 32.9 percent reported getting less than six hours per night, which was a marked increase from 28.6 percent in 2004 (this was the year of the first sleep time study). The latest figures represents a 15 percent increase and it equates to a rise of in excess of 9 million people.
Overall, people in the U.S. are sleeping for less time, especially when the current data is compared with 2013. When data is examined across different groups, the demographic most greatly affected are black adults. Here the proportion receiving less than six hours sleep is 40.9 percent. With other ethnic groupings, Hispanics are at 32.9 percent and whites at 30.9 percent.
In terms of the optimal time for sleep, according to the according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society, seen hours of more makes for the required level of sleep. The society outlines the downsides of insufficient sleep as: “Sleeping less than 7 hours per night on a regular basis is associated with adverse health outcomes, including weight gain and obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke, depression, and increased risk of death.”
Connor Sheehan, a sociologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, speculates that the key reasons for diminished sleep correlate to the rise of technology, especially gadgets with screens; and to a rise in stress levels, mostly related to work.
The research is published in the journal Sleep, with the research paper titled “Are U.S. adults reporting less sleep?: Findings from sleep duration trends in the National Health Interview Survey, 2004–2017 .”
