ATLANTA (CNN) – After a long day of work from home, Hadly Clark thoughtlessly spends her evening hours on her phone. She’s cutting through her usual 9:30 pm scheduled bedtime in favor of online shopping and social media scrolling.
Before Clark knows it, the clock reads 1am. She eventually dozes off and wakes up the next morning exhausted, her phone on her bedside table blaring her alarm clock at 6am
This cycle of staying up late and regretting it the next day is all too familiar to many people, even before the pandemic. In recent years, the phenomenon of “revenge at bedtime has been referred to as procrastination.”
Postponing revenge at bedtime may be a newer term, but the type of sleep schedule it describes isn’t, said Dr. Rajkumar Dasgupta, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
“Postponing revenge at bedtime is just a cry from overworked people, and they try to delay going to bed just a little bit so they can reclaim something for themselves,” said Dasgupta.
It’s normal for people to want to have time to themselves at night, but it becomes a problem when they’re tired during their waking hours from lack of sleep, he said.
Clark, an associate director at FasterCures who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, said she had no problems falling asleep until the pandemic forced her to work from home. Her internal clock wakes her between 5:30 am and 7:00 am regardless of what time she stays up, so she had to use coffee and soda to stay awake during the day, she said.
Her days followed consistent routines, but since the pandemic hit, Clark said she’s struggled to create a nighttime routine. She attributed it in part to not wanting to accept a pandemic.
“When I adjust to the new way of life, it’s like accepting that this is reality, and I don’t want that,” Clark said.
Brian Sinclair, a software engineer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said delaying revenge at bedtime stole his sleep long before the pandemic hit. It started about five years ago when his second child was born, leaving him less time for himself, he said.
“There is a lot of lack of control in my life,” Sinclair said, saying in the evenings that he is taking back control. He often finds himself playing video games or falling down a rabbit hole on YouTube, he said.
Why people do it
Staying up late, scrolling thoughtlessly, or watching television may be someone’s attempt at reducing stress, said Vaile Wright, senior director of health care innovation at the American Psychological Association.
“We know that simply scrolling thoughtlessly and not actually interacting in a meaningful way actually increases our stress, rather than decreases it,” said Wright.
People may also have a hard time standing still at the end of the workday, as the boundaries have blurred since the pandemic started, she said.
Sinclair, who currently works for Indeed, is a veteran of working from home and has been commuting virtually for over a decade. However, his work schedule changed when the pandemic hit to enable his children’s online learning.
We know that simply scrolling thoughtlessly and not really communicating in a meaningful way actually increases our stress, rather than decreases it.
–Vaile Wright, American Psychological Association
He spends part of the morning helping his son with online school, as the 8-year-old struggles to stay focused, Sinclair said. After that, he hands the responsibility over to his wife for most of the day.
Consequences of staying up late
Not getting enough sleep leads to sleep deprivation, which can affect your mental and physical health, Dasgupta said. He said some common consequences are decreased productivity and an increase in cortisol, a stress hormone.
If you go to bed significantly later and wake up around your usual time, you run the risk of building up sleep debt from the hours lost, according to Dasgupta. The only way to get rid of the sleep debt is to sleep by the number of hours missed, which he says is not possible for most people.
Studies show that extra sleep on the weekends is not the most effective way to make up for lost sleep. According to a 2019 study published in Current Biology, people failed to offset the effects of poor sleep during the week – such as snacking, weight gain, and disrupted circadian rhythms – by sleeping late on the weekend.
Researchers found that if someone sleeps in on the weekend but their sleep quality is poor, they tend to overeat and gain weight.
The amount of sleep a person should get varies from person to person, but in general, adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep per night, Dasgupta said.
Using technology late at night can also affect our sleep, he said. Screens emit a blue light, which Dasgupta said suppresses the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps control your sleep cycle.
How to Stop Sabotaging Your Sleep Schedule
It’s completely normal for your sleep schedule to be imperfect, especially during a pandemic, Dasgupta said. He recommended that people fall asleep both physically and mentally.
Dasgupta said most people find their bedrooms “quiet, dark and cool.” He also suggested that people engage in an activity they enjoy, such as meditation, that helps them fall asleep.
Turning off electronics and not putting them to bed is another strategy for falling asleep, he said.
A strategic power nap could also reduce a person’s sleep debt, according to Dasgupta. He recommended a 15 to 20 minute nap between noon and 2 p.m. A longer nap can put a person into deeper stages of sleep, he said, which could cause a longer sleep inertia, the sleepiness a person feels immediately upon waking up.
During the day, people have to push their boundaries and schedule time for themselves, Wright said. Clark said she is planning breaks in her day to do activities such as exercise.
She said this would help her “have time to take a breather that is also good for my physical and mental health.”
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