A few decades ago, it was seen as absurd to suggest that cigarettes would have harmful effects on your body. Now, it’s widely accepted as fact that smoking will cause a premature death, alongside other downsides like getting sick more, and there’s no disputing the downsides that tobacco has on people’s lungs and general health. However, for the longest time nobody accepted the problems with smoking, and eventually it was common among a large portion of citizens in the country. It took time for people to accept and realize their habits were killing them. Today these bad habits take shape in the form of insomnia, which is the modern way to unknowingly hurt yourself over time.
Insomnia, or even just overworking oneself, is a rising trend in America, and staying up longer in the night either for work or “just because” is far too common amongst people of any age. It seems fine now, but nobody wants to face that these insomniac trends are hurting people’s bodies in many ways, ranging from stress based side effects to sickness and exhaustion. Not only does lack of sleep prevent ones body from effectively fighting diseases, it increases a person’s likelihood of having heart diseases, high blood pressure, and even diabetes later in life. The less and less sleep someone gets, the more long term health problems they’re likely to experience further on in life.
In modern American society, it’s seen as stylish or trendy to get as little sleep as possible and still function, which is a ridiculous idea. Nowadays bags under one’s eyes are a fashion trend to show they are a night owl or a hard worker when in reality all it shows is a lack of self control. Many have heard friends or coworkers bragging about how little sleep they got, flaunting the fact that they only “got 3 hours of sleep.” This makes everyone else who got a healthy amount of sleep look like the obvious fool of the group. It’s seen as cool and good to get no sleep, like it’s a good conversation piece that would somehow make people more interesting or garner more sympathy, when in reality they’re just setting themselves up for health issues in the next few years of their life. The issue of sleep deprivation doesn’t only affect teenagers, this trend is a part of adult and even younger children’s lifestyles. Adults commonly stay up later than they should, either from stress or overworking themselves. Children will stay up late at night out of boredom or because they’re being kept awake by a tablet that constantly pulls in their attention. But no matter the age group, the basis behind these unhealthy sleep patterns is the formation of bad habits.
One of the main reasons behind these negative habits is the social expectation they carry. A lack of sleep has become a false sign of a hard worker, or creates an image of someone who doesn’t care. The insomnia style is tied to modern day society, and isn’t an easily solvable issue. It requires a conscious effort to get a healthy amount of sleep, meaning people as a whole are going to need to try harder to not kill themselves. A vast number of Americans are guilty of not sleeping when they really need it, or pretending to be adversed by how little sleep they got, like it’s a competition amongst their peers and they’ve received the golden trophy. The insomniac lifestyle is an impractical one, and those who suffer from it due to medical reasons aren’t fond of it. There is no valid reason for such a large portion of society to bring this unhealthy lifestyle onto themselves.
