If there is any generation that gets 90 percent of the flak on social media today, it is not the one responsible for slavery, the world wars, or communal rioting. It is millennials, a group vaguely classified as those who were young adults in the 21st century. We millennials are known as a lazy bunch. Ironically, we’re also the ones getting the least amount of nap time or sleep. Why is that?
What do millennials do if they aren’t sleeping?
Millennials are the working youth you see on social media and television today. They are the influencers on your Instagram. They are the journalists you love following. They are entrepreneurs behind many of the start-ups you read about.
Even the ones you don’t read about, or know of, are sold on the capitalist dream of going to college, working day and night, while actively pursuing hobbies and other interests. As they say, YOLO, so you don’t have FOMO.
Hooked to technology, working till the wee hours of the morning, and caving under loans and financial burdens, millennials are probably the most stressed-out generation. Despite being taught to do too much, know too much, and aspire for more, millennials are famous for being lazy. Obviously, that isn’t the case, if the number of millennials complaining of insomnia, is anything to go by.
It’s also about socio-economic stress.
Inflation leading to high living costs, increased house rent (forget real estate prices), outrageous education fees in private schools and colleges, plus aspirational spending on hobbies, have all put an insane amount of financial stress on millennials. To become someone, and to maintain your position in society, you have to spend money if you’re not born into it. In a world all about keeping up with the Joneses (or the Kardashians), many millennials are stressed about working harder and harder to get richer.
This also brings its own social stress. The famously-ridiculed urban poor spend sleepless nights worrying about their inadequacy in a social capacity. Each picture of their acquaintances partying in Ibiza and eating at the latest fancy pub, is an isolating, stressful experience because it makes one feel like they are missing out on important, pleasant experiences despite working hard.
Obviously this kind of stress contributes to a drive to achieve more, which brings additional work responsibilities, and less sleep.
That ambition, that need to have it all and do it all, is at least partially responsible for insomnia and lack of sleep, mainly triggered by stress, but also catalysed by lack of breathing space. What if we sleep and miss out on something? What if we sleep while someone else surpasses us at work and takes away our goals? Considering the competitive nature of the world today, this is a constant factor nagging at us.
Technology gets most of the blame, but not all of it.
Another major reason our social media-obsessed generation never sleeps is because the internet never sleeps. Studies have shown that the blue light emitted by our phones and screens suppresses the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls the sleep cycle. Not only that, the constant bombardment of information on our devices means our minds are always working overtime.
It’s not just television or phones, but an inability to switch off and unwind.
At the end of the day, what happens because of being connected to the whole world all the time is that we are constantly wired. In the midst of personal economic crises, a global political situation that is getting increasingly volatile, and facing disillusionments about adulthood, there are many reasons we cannot sleep in peace. There are many reasons we are unable to switch off and unwind. There are too many roles to play, too many things to do. There are too many messages from work, too many friends we’d lose if we don’t reply to them, too many causes to fight for. Where’s the time to sleep, for the lazy millennial? How do we get used to relaxing in the peace and quiet of our bed at 11 pm, if our surroundings are always abuzz?
