By Alexander Tran
Good sleep is an essential part of good health, especially for teenagers. Pediatricians worldwide recommend that high school students should receive 8 to 10 hours of sleep every day. But for some reason, many students report not receiving the recommended amount.
Why do so many students struggle with sleep?
In a survey conducted by Baron Banner, it was found that 43/50 students at Fountain Valley High School have experienced sleep anxiety once a week, within the last six months. In the study, it was clarified that insomnia and sleep anxiety is different. Insomnia is a broad term, whereas sleep anxiety is a specific category and is a part of insomnia.
On WebMD, insomnia is defined as “a sleep disorder in which you have trouble falling and/or staying asleep.”
On the other hand, “sleep anxiety is fear or worry about going to sleep,” a licensed specialist said at Cleveland Clinic.
Crystal Raypole, a credited writer on Healthline, wrote in an article that some mental symptoms of sleep anxiety are: feeling fear, anxiety and panic when thinking about sleeping, experiencing distress as it gets closer to bedtime, avoiding going to sleep or staying up as long as possible, having panic attacks when it’s time to sleep, having trouble focusing on things besides sleep-related worry and fear, experiencing irritability or mood swings, and having a hard time remembering things.
Some common physical symptoms of sleep anxiety include nausea or other stomach issues related to persistent anxiety around sleep, tightness in your chest and increased heart rate when thinking about sleep, sweating, chills and hyperventilation or other trouble breathing when you think about sleeping.
Nathan Tran, a sophomore who answered “yes” when asked if he has experienced sleep anxiety in the survey explained how anxiety over a sport kept him awake.
“When water polo was still in season, there were nights where I couldn’t fall asleep because I was scared of the outcome of the game the following day,” Tran said.
Like Tran, many other athletes worldwide have also experienced sleep anxiety and issues. Scott Kutsher, the Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine said, “60% of athletes reported insomnia the night before competition.”
There is another type of sleep anxiety known as somniphobia, where a person has a fear of falling asleep and staying asleep, because something may happen to them. It’s like when a kid watches a scary movie and is afraid to go to bed for a couple of nights. Like children, even when people are tired, they still will not fall asleep due to that constant fear.
Although a majority do not specifically experience somniphobia, it was found that 50-70 million Americans experience some form of somniphobia.
A board-certified geriatric and psychiatric mental health practitioner, Timothy J. Legg, medically reviewed an article that discussed how somniphobia is frequently caused by PTSD, sleep paralysis and nightmare disorder.
Jennifer Nguyen, a junior who also answered “yes” to the survey explained her experience with sleep anxiety.
“Some nights I lay there in bed, and I think a little too hard, and I get a panic attack episode…my heart starts to race, I can’t breathe, and my mind is going crazy,” Nguyen said. “As a kid, I’ve always had trouble falling asleep because I used to be scared of the dark amongst many other things, but when I got older, that fear carried over. Although in my mind I’m not scared anymore, I’m just super used to being scared.”
Sleep anxiety, along with many other sleeping disorders, can be improved, if not cured, by better sleep hygiene. In an article published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it states that “[some] habits that can improve your sleep health: be consistent (go to bed at the same time each night and get up at the same time each morning, including on the weekends), make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, relaxing and at a comfortable temperature, remove electronic devices, such as TVs, computers, and smartphones, from the bedroom, avoid large meals, and caffeine before bedtime and get some exercise, because being physically active during the day can help you fall asleep more easily at night.
Dzinh Pham, another junior who has experienced sleep anxiety, believes that it’s due to excessive phone usage.
“I’ve always had trouble sleeping. When I first got my phone in middle school, I was so excited to use it, and for many nights I stayed up using it. That habit seemed to carry over,” Pham said. “A lot of nights still, I have this impulse to just grab my phone and scroll through Tik Tok and Instagram.”
The reason why many students, such as Pham, have been so addicted to Tik Tok, as well as other similar apps, is because the apps are all dopamine factories.
In an article by The Gauntlet, “dopamine is an excitatory brain neurotransmitter… It’s a chemical messenger that sends information from your nerve cells to other parts of the body. This important neurochemical boosts our mood and motivation, giving us a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction as part of its reward system. It creates reward-seeking loops in the sense that people will seek to repeat pleasurable behaviors, such as spending time on Instagram or Tik Tok.”
The way TikTok messes with people’s dopamine levels and reward system is by supplying a constant flow of videos that provide meager amounts of dopamine. This is what keeps people from scrolling and scrolling through videos, buzzing for countless hours. In a Forbes article, Dr. Julie Albright, a sociologist specializing in digital culture and communication, mentioned that many Tik Tok and other alike app users entrance themselves “in this pleasurable dopamine state, carried away. It’s almost hypnotic, you’ll keep watching and watching.”
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that students should avoid using electronic devices, at least 30 minutes before bedtime to ensure a good night’s sleep. Instead, it is much better to just grab a book, because as boring of a remedy it is, paper pages full of words are not as potent to your sleep as blue light from a cell phone.
