A Writer's Everything

Sleep is needed for all humans to correctly function. It’s one thing college students become good at is making time for, whether it is a quick nap in some free time after a bad night, or scheduling it in when so they can wake up for class on time.

However, college students might not be getting as much sleep as they should be. These articles from the University of Georgia, goodcall.com, and npr.org give the issues from students lacking sleep, but also tips and tricks for them to get the sleep they need.

The article written by the University Health Center at the University of Georgia is very informational about why sleep is invaluable for college students.

Their website is separated by small sections for each bolded heading, such as “WHY do we need sleep?”, “HOW MUCH sleep do we need?”, and “CONSEQUENCES of sleep loss.”

After the “CONSEQUENCES of sleep loss” section, they list some of the physical and mental health issues associated with lack of sleep, such as “impact[ing] the immune system function,” “obesity,” “impact[ing] brain function, attention span, mood and reaction times,” depression, and anxiety.

The article also mentions the impact on a student’s top priority: academic performance. It’s usually negative because sleep deprivation affects memory recall, among other things.

The article finishes with ideas for figuring out how to get enough sleep, what to avoid for getting sleep, as well as some insight for students to recognize if they might have a sleep disorder.

The article written by Terri Williams on goodcall.com gives many statistics in her article about what students think about sleep: “A recent survey reveals that college students consider sleep to be an important factor in their success – but admit that they’re not sleeping as much as they should.”

Williams continues the article with more survey statistics, as well as creating sub-headlines in her article about why the appropriate amount of sleep is ideal: “Emotional and cognitive reasons why sleep is important” and “Other problems caused by insufficient sleep.”

Williams also relays tips to students for “How to develop better sleeping habits” from associate professor Dr. Ann M. Romaker at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, who says “Setting a cut-off time for studying – and then sticking to it – is helpful, as is keeping that schedule regularly” and more.

The article written by Anya Kamenetz on npr.org tells the opposite side of the story. She believes college students are not actually sleep deprived.

“Students aren’t as sleep-deprived as we might think. The overall average was 7 hours and 3 minutes during the week, and 7 hours 38 minutes on the weekends.” This comes from a study released by Jawbone, a developer of wearable sleep and activity trackers.

The study also tells the reader that students at more difficult/high level universities go to sleep later, but are still within the appropriate range of time asleep.

Kamentz acknowledges the opposing side to her argument by quoting Jawbone’s head of data science and analytics, Brian Wilt: “Framed another way, they got less than seven hours of sleep on 46.2 percent of nights. So I think it’s definitely a problem.”

However, she sticks by her original argument that students are in fact much more concerned about their health, including their sleeping patterns, than originally thought. This is shown by their increase in buying and using fitness equipment such as Jawbone’s tracker.