Why do contemporary young people enjoy staying up late so much?
The Hardship of Staying Up Late
Only by staying up late can one have their own time, a truly complete and free time that belongs to oneself.
Young people around the age of 23, wake up around 7 o’clock in the morning. In order to sleep a few more minutes, there is no time to make or eat breakfast. They buy breakfast at the subway station and eat while walking. Then, they squeeze onto the subway, using the fragmented time on the subway to browse their phones. The morning belongs to the company boss. At noon, they hastily eat a mouthful of rice while watching a few short videos (in fragmented time). There is no time for a nap, and they have to go back to work. It is highly likely that they will work overtime in the evening. They leave work around 7 or even 8 or 9 o’clock. They start squeezing onto the subway, go home, cook or order takeout, do laundry, tidy up the room, and after taking a shower, it’s already at least 9 o’clock. What can they do while lying on the couch? Browse their phones! If they work late, it’s probably already 10 or 11 o’clock, so they just lie directly on the bed, still browsing their phones! Why do they browse their phones? What else can they do if they don’t browse their phones? Do I have time to watch a movie or read a book carefully? Do I have time to play a single-player game? I can only enjoy this short-lived and completely unsatisfying happiness! I can only enjoy this cheap and cheap electronic opium. Don’t I know it’s electronic opium? Do I have a choice?
Only the time lying in bed is my own time, the whole uninterrupted time. Am I willing to sleep after just a few minutes of browsing? Once I sleep, this day is over, and I still have to go squeeze onto the subway tomorrow morning!
If you are a middle-aged person around the age of 30 and have children, even the time lying in bed is not yours. Only when your wife and children are sleeping, only the time you spend in the toilet is completely yours. So don’t ask why men like to go to the toilet! It’s not because they like going to the toilet, but because they want a little bit of their own time!
Staying up late, do you think we have a choice? Who likes to stay up late? If we don’t stay up late, we will truly become work machines! Because of overtime work and takeout food, our bodies are already very unhealthy, and we definitely need some stimulation mentally.
When will the labor laws have stricter regulations? When will it be easier for us working people to protect our rights? We don’t have any way!
The Needs of the Soul
In general, the following three reasons can be summarized:
01. Finding Ourselves in the Night, Filled with Work during the Day
Many people are familiar with the phenomenon of staying up late as a form of retaliation. Even though they have to go to work at nine o’clock in the morning, they still can’t control themselves and end up playing on their phones until one or two o’clock in the morning after getting off work at ten o’clock at night.
Similarly, after a period of dieting and weight loss, some people start binge eating, continuously stuffing themselves with food even when they are already extremely full.
They know that someone is a “jerk” or a “player,” but they still want to get close to that person and establish a relationship, repeatedly falling into similar emotional “traps” until they are hurt.
It makes one wonder, why do we keep on repeating behaviors that we clearly know are not beneficial to ourselves, and find it difficult to stop relying on self-control?
It’s because in the process of satisfying our own needs, we constantly experience “failure.” Those needs that have never been fully satisfied do not disappear, but instead exist in the background of our minds, quietly running without our awareness, occupying the limited running memory we have.
Unmet needs can be: the desire for closeness with others, a sense of meaning in life, a sense of achievement at work, and so on.
When we cannot fully realize our potential, we are unwilling to simply fall asleep.
Staying up late is the moment when we strip away the various social labels carried during the day and return to a state of “freedom.”
It is a psychological compensation for selling ourselves during the day in exchange for survival resources.
It is an inevitable way for us to seek spiritual liberation within the limited environmental conditions.
02. Inability to Take Care of Oneself, Lacking a “Good Object” Internally
When we were little and slept together with our mothers, there should have been no one who couldn’t sleep well. With our mother by our side, we felt comforted and secure. As a stable object, our mother was our safe haven.
As we grow older, we no longer have the gentle touch and companionship before bedtime that our mother provided. This requires us to develop an internal “good object” to replace our mother.
In essence, what we need in our lives is a stable and secure relationship.
When we lack this stable object relationship, we long for it and it gives rise to anxiety. Because as ordinary people, there is no magic that appears before our eyes when we desire something that we cannot obtain, so we are used to enduring, telling ourselves it’s fine, deceiving ourselves, and having trouble falling asleep.
In fact, a healthy relationship that can serve as a “good object” does not necessarily have to be obtained through romantic love and marriage. Building deep friendships with friends or establishing a stable therapeutic alliance with a psychologist can also nourish our souls very well.
Imagine, meeting with your therapist for a mental exchange at a fixed time and place every week, day after day. When you turn around and return to real life, you will have more confidence in facing the storms of life.
Because you know that no matter what happens, the therapist will always be there for you. If you are unsure why you are experiencing insomnia, you can scan the QR code below for a free trial and give yourself a deep “psychological health assessment and analysis." (Appointments can be made at the end of the article)
Humans live among crowds, and no one can enjoy solitude indefinitely. You will find that everyone unconsciously seeks a “good object,” and sleep problems are another expression of this search behavior.
03. Pursuing Perfection, Ruminating Before Bed
Friends who have difficulty falling asleep say, “I have to review my day before bed. I often spend a long time thinking about where I didn’t perform well at work during the day.”
In reality, reviewing the day before bed is a good habit that helps us adjust and control our lives more clearly. However, when anything exceeds a certain limit, it tends to slide into out of control territory.
Sun Wei, Director of the Sleep Medicine Department at Peking University Sixth Hospital, wrote in “Insomnia Cure” that insomnia is often related to one’s personality: the more easily one becomes anxious and the stronger their desire for control, the higher the risk of insomnia.
In other words, if we are inclined towards perfectionism and prefer everything to happen under our own control and prediction, and if we have strict standards for evaluating ourselves and others, we are more likely to suffer from insomnia.
This is because, in most cases, individuals with these tendencies have lower tolerance for things such as “insomnia” that are beyond their control. They dislike random occurrences and resent feeling like they have lost control over their lives. Therefore, the anxiety about “insomnia” exacerbates their insomnia, leading them into a vicious cycle.
For sleep disorders caused by these reasons, cognitive-behavioral therapy can be considered for intervention. For example:
(1) Learning to reduce self-criticism and correct irrational cognitions about sleep;
(2) Establishing new positive and rational cognitions, letting go of the obsession with “perfection”;
(3) Validating the effectiveness of newly established beliefs/thought processes through behavioral experiments.
Sleep problems not only reflect changes in our physical and mental state during a certain period of time, but also have a significant impact on how we interact with the outside world and how we treat ourselves. This is a long-term personal issue.
Finally, sleep, which occupies one-third of our lives, has an undeniable impact on our overall well-being and quality of life.
If you are currently experiencing insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, shallow sleep, or disrupted sleep patterns, please pay attention to these signals and take good care of yourself. Do not hesitate to seek help; you can contact me for any needs.
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The Life of Young People is Overdrawn
It’s not that young people like staying up late, but their lives are overdrawn.
Take myself as an example. When I go to work, I leave home at 6:30 in the morning and return home at 8:30 in the evening. By the time I finish eating and tidying up, it’s already past 9 o’clock. I often find myself breathless from exhaustion, and if I have to take care of children, I won’t have any personal time until after 10 o’clock. I have hardly any free time during the day. Each bit of time is used to recover from the various expenditures of the day: physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, mental exhaustion.
Often, I realize it’s already midnight without even noticing, just as I’m starting to relax.
There’s some mental space to calm down and think about my own issues.
So many people overcrowd into this city. In my view, young people can come here for a few years to experience the fast pace of life for the sake of their dreams or self-improvement. But if it’s solely for the purpose of enjoying and experiencing life itself, I really do not recommend this city.
More than 4 hours a day are spent on the road or commuting.
In the subway, on the bus, on the streets, everywhere you see tired and stern faces. It’s not that they don’t want to enjoy the sunshine, but they’re just too tired. They lack the energy to express joy, so they find temporary relief through brief moments of resting their eyes on their phone screens, and then they’re back on the road to make a living.
Many people come from poorer areas and hope to stay in this city. There are also many who have nowhere else to go and are temporarily settled here. During the daytime, there is no personal time, only when the night is quiet can they have a bit of their own space.
In the past, I used to enjoy walking on quiet streets at night, feeling a rare sense of tranquility. Choosing such a life is like climbing a mountain. I believe that true young people who rely on themselves are facing numerous challenges, exerting the most effort, and enduring the most hardship. No other generation has entered society and started a family burdened with enormous debts.
What is sacrificed is the space for development and the cost of skills improvement.
I am one of the very few young people who have struggled through. But when I think about how, in order to study psychology in a different field, I had to save money to the point where I could barely afford to pay my mortgage, my feelings become quite complex. I am also grateful for having had good health during that time. So I am strongly against those organizations and groups that continuously exploit mental health counselors, as well as those who control resources and occupy positions, negatively influencing the development of the industry under the guise of being “authorities.”
Talking about situations in isolation is feeble.
Blaming young people without considering the causes of the problems not only does no good, but it also prevents us from seeing the essence of the issues. Every holiday, when I see young people rushing around in shopping malls and various places, I sometimes feel a sense of pity. I hope they can have more time to do what they want to do and enjoy their youth.
I think this stems from my own past regrets and compensations.
The most difficult thing in this world is understanding, and yet the simplest thing is also understanding. If there is understanding, I believe that the older and younger generations will become the best of friends. How wonderful that kind of world would be. What we assume is ultimately just what we assume. Even with ample personal experience, it is difficult to truly experience the world of children. They deserve every parent’s inquiry and effort to understand. This attitude is a manifestation of parental wisdom.
Many times, attitude is more important.
Essay, Some Reflections on Life: 2023.11.20
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