Paper
In this response I will discuss a paper that analyses time diaries to determine sleeping patterns in different countries, over times and across genders.
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact” - Bertrand Russel
8 Hours a Week
A common modern complaint, heard by everyone, is insufficient sleep. There are probably a few reasons for this, people working in offices or as "knowledge workers" spend a great deal of time in front of a monitor. This simulates to the brain sunlight and makes it difficult to fall asleep. People apparently work longer hours, have more activities, do more things and balance more roles. On the other hand, sleep is clearly a biological mechanism. The idea that it could be voluntarily out of whack for long periods of time is strange. Complaining about poor sleep also sends a clear message, that you are busy and important. An economist would call this status signaling and psychologist the 'presentation of self'.
Research Findings
The researchers in this paper point out that the former argument is probably correct. 'Time diary' studies - which are apparently consistently done by various government agencies - find that people actually do get about 8 hours of sleep a night. And that this number appears to hold mostly constant across countries. The researchers spend some time discussing some minor patterns they did find ... such as how women sleep more and the educated less. They also found some patterns based on countries such as lower sleep numbers in Germany and Japan.
Summary
It appears then that most people are still getting a standard amount of sleep and that complaints about sleep is what's actually rising. This confirms that some forms of data collection, such as 'just asking people' are probably exposed to bias. This might be a good lesson for survey papers.
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