Wen | Zhai Li
Have you slept enough today? Recently, the "China Sleep Research Report (2022)" was released. The report shows that in the past 10 years, Chinese people have slept more than two hours late, and the average sleep time has shrunk from 8.5 hours in 2012 to 7.06 hours in 2021, and only 35% of Chinese people have slept enough for 8 hours. Among them, new mothers, students, and professionals have prominent sleep problems.
Frankly, these figures may not surprise many people. In addition to the factors mentioned in the report that affect sleep duration, such as the impact of sleep delays caused by looking at mobile phones or surfing the Internet, work or study time squeezing out sleep time, insomnia and other sleep disorders, in fact, the lack of public awareness and social security is also a key factor.
Teachers and children at Zhile Kindergarten in Weinan City, Shaanxi Province, play sleep games. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Cui Zhengbo)
During the Beijing Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing's living habits attracted a lot of attention. She once confessed on a TV show that one of the secret weapons she can win one championship after another is sleep, and she sleeps ten hours a day. Not long ago, she was even more "prominent" on social media: she slept for 14 hours in one breath. People marveled: the champion actually loves to sleep?
People's surprise actually reflects some of the public's cognitive biases. It's time to ditch the phrase "You've seen four o'clock in the morning... "I use other people's sleep time..." "Sleep is a waste of life" this argument. Not sleeping, or not getting enough sleep, is the real waste of life.
Many people's anxiety about time and the bad habit of asking for time directly from sleep may be developed from the school period. Especially in the high-intensity learning stages such as the sprint middle school entrance examination and the college entrance examination, such as "as long as you don't die, you will learn to die", "Sleep one minute less will not die, and one more test will determine the fate", "Waste a minute today, regret it for a lifetime" and so on. These, in subtlety, will make people have an acquired cognitive rejection of the innate physiological instinct of sleep.
Junior and third graders attend classes in the classroom. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhou Hua
Professor Lu Yunhui, executive director of the China Sleep Research Association, believes that "in this era of material explosion, we pay attention to too many things: money, fame and fortune, status, pleasure... And the only thing that we don't pay attention to is what we should pay the most attention to, and we don't listen to the difficult sounds of our bodies. "Yes, in our contemporary world, where both material and spiritual goods are abundant, we often neglect ourselves.
In view of the external factors affecting students' sleep problems, the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Sleep Management of Primary and Secondary School Students" last year, requiring primary school students to sleep for 10 hours a day, junior high school students to reach 9 hours, and high school students to reach 8 hours; and even stipulated that the morning class time of primary schools should generally not be earlier than 8:20, and middle schools should generally not be earlier than 8:00 and other specific standard lines.
First-year students of Hangzhou Yongzheng Experimental School prepare for a lunch break in the nap room. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Zongzhi
So, what about adults? In 2018, a Japanese company also made the news of "paying employees to sleep well", claiming that employees who sleep more than 6 hours at least 5 days a week can earn reward points. This may have a marketing component, but it reflects a more positive and healthy, humanistic corporate culture trend.
In recent years, many Internet companies in the mainland have also taken measures to ensure the rest time of employees, and canceled the work system of long-term overtime and excessive overtime such as large and small weeks, which can be seen as people's call for a humanized working environment. But we must also realize that this should be an inherent requirement of a civilized and healthy modern corporate culture.
Of course, to improve the overall sleep quality of the people, it is not enough to rely on institutions such as enterprises and schools to act. Government departments can also introduce more targeted safeguard measures, carry out more in-depth publicity of the concept of healthy sleep, urge individuals to develop good work and rest habits, and form a high degree of attention and scientific cognition of sleep quality in the whole society.
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Text: Zhai Li
Recitation: Wang Qian
Photo: Xinhua net, etc
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yongqun
Editors: Xing Yanyan Wu Yaqi