Staying Up Late A Lot Might Mean You’re Affected By Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, And This Twitter User Went Viral For Explaining Why

There’s a chance that you are reading this from the comfort of your bed and and maybe at least one or a few times, you have found yourself staying up late although you’re tired and had a long day. Apparently, this is an actual phenomenon called revenge bedtime procrastination where you put off going to bed so that you have your own ‘me time’ within your busy days. And you may not have heard about it before, but you might be affected by it if you tend to stay up later than actually necessary.

This condition got the attention of a Twitter user that shared it in a post, often finding herself delaying going to sleep or waking up early in order to have more time just for herself. Let us know if this has ever happened or happens to you in the comments below!

More info: Twitter

So if your day is pretty busy, filled to the brim with various tasks, the hours seem to vanish, and you find yourself out of time to actually do what you really like (or you think you should do), then you are trying to make up for lost time and denying yourself sleep so you can spend it on the stuff that you wanted to do (to take “revenge” on the daytime hours). Since the pandemic started and ran pretty much everyone in the world through some stress and altered working conditions, home life, and even habits, people on social media decided to find out what exactly is happening. As scary as it sounds, approximately 40% of adults reported having troubles with their sleep. But revenge bedtime procrastination was around before the pandemic and people have just started paying attention to their sleep health recently.

The response to Twitter user @abbiehive’s post was impressive as it got over 543.8K likes and 95K retweets. Some users shared pictographs that explain revenge bedtime procrastination, and some noted that the phenomena is common among people who have ADHD. One user was surprised that there is a name to describe not wanting to go to bed and he also admitted to having the thought process that if he doesn’t go to sleep, the day will never end. Another person with autism shared that they do something similar, figuring out that they need to “decompress” before he can actually sleep. Also, some people admitted to feeling guilty for not sleeping enough and then waking up tired the next day.

Sleep patterns differ from person to person; for example, busy mothers of a few kids might want to just have some quiet time and check out social media, or if your day is extremely organized, all you want to do is to watch an episode of your favorite TV show at the end of the day. So all of the activities done during revenge bedtime procrastination are usually easy things that are easy to enjoy. The procrastination comes from lack of free time throughout the day and not being able to do things just for simple pleasure.

There are suggestions that maintaining your sleep hygiene might help keep you from falling for revenge bedtime procrastination. So keeping up a consistent sleep schedule, adding resting, if possible, to your schedule, and even making time for the things and people you appreciate the most might be some of the points to assist in fighting the need to put off sleeping.