Do you have insomnia? "Special hardship students" have created a sleep economy of 100 billion, and merchants have developed brainwave patents to help sleep

Jia Xuan, a reporter from China Economic Weekly, | Beijing

People spend one-third of their lives in sleep, which shows the necessity of sleep for human health. 21 March is also designated as World Sleep Day.

In recent years, more and more young people have caused hair loss and anxiety due to insomnia and lack of sleep. According to the "China Sleep Research Report (2022)" released by the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 57.41% of the respondents said that they had insomnia for 1-7 days in the past month, and 2.96% of the respondents had insomnia most of the time.

With a series of sleep problems, the sleep economy has begun to become a new format of the Chinese market, containing new business opportunities, and various merchants and capitals have entered the game to "sleep".

300 million people in the mainland have sleep disorders, and education, training, sales and other industries have become "hard-hit areas"

As the saying goes, spring sleepiness, autumn lack of summer napping, can not wake up in the winter of March. But why can't this young man sleep?

According to the "China Sleep Research Report (2022)", in the past 10 years, Chinese people have fallen asleep more than two hours late, and the average sleep time has shrunk from 8.5 hours in 2012 to 7.06 hours in 2021. Only 35% of Chinese people sleep enough for 8 hours, and the sleep problems of new mothers, students, and professionals are prominent. Young people aged 20-29 sleep 7.18 hours a day, which is no longer enough to meet the sleep time required for this age group.

From the perspective of the form of sleep distress, difficulty falling asleep has become the number one problem. In addition, mobile phones have become sleep killers, and nearly 70% of late sleep is associated with it.

"I am a senior 'special hardship student', I can't sleep at night, I can't wake up during the day, and my work must continue to live on coffee." Zhang Qi, a post-90s migrant girl in Beijing, told the China Economic Weekly reporter. According to her, working overtime to get home late directly leads to her "dinner late" and "washing late", and you can climb into bed in the middle of the night.

The "2021 Urban Workers Sleep Report" shows that only 30% of office workers have a deep sleep time standard. Among them, education and training, sales, service personnel and Internet practitioners are listed in the top four of the "TOP10 Industries Plagued by Sleep Problems".

74% of the service personnel work for more than two hours to deliver takeaways and car deliveries at night. Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and self-employed people have irregular work and rest accounted for 52%. In addition, 69% of doctors wake up before 7 a.m., of which 49% sleep less than 6 hours. More than 60% of epidemic prevention personnel sleep less than 7 hours.

Recently, a report released by the Sleep Medicine Professional Committee of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association shows that the average sleep time of Chinese office workers is 7.5 hours per day. Office workers over the age of 35 sleep gradually reduce with age.

In addition to objective factors such as overtime and long commuting time, migrant workers are "forced to stay up late", and many young people are "taking the initiative to stay up late". They sacrifice part of their sleep time to make up for the lack of self during the day and try to give life more space for self.

Li Beibei, a post-90s Shandong girl who works in a state-owned enterprise, although she arrives home early after work every day, she still sleeps late. She said: "During the day, it is an endless PPT, an endless meeting, and the time at night is finally my own, and I am really reluctant to sleep." Casually watch a live broadcast, visit an online store, chase two episodes of TV series, it is the middle of the night. ”

The "2021 Exercise and Sleep White Paper" shows that there are more than 300 million people in China who have sleep disorders, of which the sleep problems of young people represented by the post-90s, post-95s and post-00s are the most prominent. 69.3% of young people do not go to bed until after 23:00, while 34.8% of young people fall asleep for a long time and it is difficult to fall asleep within half an hour.

By looking at the user activity report between the short video platform and the e-commerce live broadcast, the reporter found that many platforms mentioned 21-23 points as the "night peak" of traffic concentration.

Xu Lei, a henan boy who is studying in his third year, told reporters that he did not sleep for an average of 8 hours a day. He said that from the third year of junior high school, as long as you sleep for 5-6 hours, you will wake up, although you don't need to get up so early in college, but you still can't change your work and rest habits in three years. "When I wake up, I can't sleep anymore, I feel tired from class during the day, and I want to sleep well."

Survey data show that the average length of work or study per day for young people is 8.04 hours, and work and study crowd out sleep time and become one of the factors affecting sleep.

Dark circles, brain waves, sleeping positions... Merchants are targeting the sleep economy in the 100 billion market

The problem of insomnia has spawned a huge "sleep economy". In the past two years, the sleep economy has begun to become a new format of the Chinese market, containing unlimited new business opportunities. According to CCTV Finance, the size of the mainland sleep economy market will exceed 400 billion yuan in 2020, and it is expected to exceed one trillion yuan in 2030.

According to the data of Tianyancha, in the past 5 years, the number of registrations of sleep-related enterprises in the mainland has increased significantly, and 62% of related enterprises have been established within 5 years. At present, there are more than 2,500 enterprises in the mainland whose names or business scope include "sleep, sleep aid, sleep coaxing, melatonin", and the status is that of related enterprises in business, survival, migration in and out.

In terms of industry distribution, 64% of sleep-related enterprises are distributed in wholesale and retail trade. 15% of sleep-related enterprises are distributed in scientific research and technical services.

Open social media to search for keywords such as "insomnia" and "sleep aid", and the products can be described as various. Among them, there are many health care products, food and beverages, more "hardware" equipment such as sleep meters and mattresses, and even "software" services such as sleep-inducing sleepers and sleep aids. Zhang Qi mentioned in the interview that she has long been concerned about a "sleep blogger" to help fans fall asleep by playing soothing music and meditation.

Among the many sleep economy products, smart wearable devices can most intuitively monitor sleep status. According to the latest data from IDC, an authoritative research institution, global wearable device shipments reached 444.7 million units in 2020, an increase of 28.4% over the previous year.

The head effect of the market is obvious, and the share of the top five manufacturers is 67.1%, which are Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, and Fitbit. In addition, the sleep economy has spawned a series of patents related to corporate research and development. On April 27, 2021, Ma Yinglong Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. published an invention patent entitled "Traditional Chinese Medicine Compositions for Eye Care and Their Preparation Methods and Applications". According to reports, the invention has a significant effect on the poor sleep state, pressure and other reasons caused by poor microcirculation of the eye skin and melanin concentration caused by dark circles, and has a good effect on fine lines and sagging caused by dryness and aging of the eyes.

On August 6, 2021, OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. obtained the patent authorization of "a method, device, storage medium and terminal to assist sleep". When the terminal detects the user's insomnia, it can automatically emit ultrasonic waves similar to the user's brain waves to guide the user into a sleep state, avoiding the situation that the user interacts with the terminal and is not easy to enter the sleep state.

Recently, Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. and its subsidiary Zhuhai Lianyun Technology Co., Ltd. announced a patent for "sleeping posture correction and control methods, devices, storage media and electronic equipment". According to the user's physical health data, the method determines the first sleeping position that matches the allowed use, the second sleeping position that is allowed to be used but prohibited for more than the first time, and the third sleeping position that is prohibited. Interfere with the user's current sleep state in the case of determining that the user is in the second sleeping position for a longer period of time than the first time, or in the third sleeping position.

(At the request of the interviewee, all names in the article are pseudonyms)

Editor-in-charge: Guo Jiyao

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