Across Society
National Geographic Magazine has reported that the demands of work, social activities, and the availability of 24-hour home entertainment and internet access have caused people to sleep less now than in premodern times. USA Today reported in 2007 that most adults in the USA get about an hour less than the average sleep time 40 years ago.
Other researchers have questioned these claims. A 2004 editorial in the journal Sleep stated that according to the available data, the average number of hours of sleep in a 24-hour period has not changed significantly in recent decades among adults. Furthermore, the editorial suggests that there is a range of normal sleep time required by healthy adults, and many indicators used to suggest chronic sleepiness among the population as a whole do not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
A comparison of data collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey from 1965–1985 and 1998–2001 has been used to show that the median amount of sleep, napping, and resting done by the average adult American has changed by less than 0.7%, from a median of 482 minutes per day from 1965 through 1985, to 479 minutes per day from 1998 through 2001.
Read more about this topic: Sleep Debt
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