The Student Room Group

Why do most young adults develop a natural, semi-nocturnal sleeping pattern?

its a phase which almost every young adult goes through and its not helped from the peer pressure we have in our late teens to go out until the early hours of the morning getting off our faces with alcohol.

its happened to almost everyone i know including my siblings and my parents said it happened to them. when we reach 16/17/18, we fall into a natural sem-nocturnal sleeping pattern of naturally wanting to go to sleep between about 2am and 4am. then wake up at about 1pm or 2pm. this is my natural sleeping pattern. i fell into it when i was 17 during the summer between Year 12 anad Year 13 and its been very hard to break this since. i have been assured by my dad that you slowly drift back into a normal sleeping pattern by your mid-twenties.

in the holidays, i find myself (unless i have a job or something that needs doing early) waking up after midday without fail. its my natural sleeping pattern these days.

i am creating this thread because i found it unusually hard to wake up at 10am today. 10am isnt very early but it feels very early to me these days. when i was 15/16 and younger, 10am was the typical time i would be waking up in holidays and on weekends. usually it was closer to 9am.

so why do most young adults develop a natural, semi-nocturnal sleeping pattern?

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Reply 1
I go out every so often, it has nothing to do with peer pressure. What kind of a clown drinks because his mates tell him to?
(edited 12 years ago)
Up too late watching porn probably, as soon as websites got a related videos section it was goodbye to the adolescent sleeping pattern.
Sometimes mine is downright non-nocturnal. :K:

I think I enjoy the calm and silence that staying up at night gives you. And there's just something about staying up all night that I can't quite put my finger on that leaves you sleeping late even if you've promised yourself you wouldn't. It's like a break in time where you don't feel the stress you would during the day I guess. And I think most teens feel that way, apart from the staying up late because of clubbing or going out.
I feel like going to bed early is a waste of the day to be honest (but waking up later isn't)...
Original post by Aj12
I go out every so often, it has nothing to do with peer pressure. What kind of a clown drinks because his mates tell him to?

You ever tried refusing drinks on your birthday when an entire roomful of people are trying to get you bladdered? It requires the willpower of God himself.
Reply 6
our sleep-wake cycles shift during adolescence so we are naturally inclined to feel more comfortable going to bed later and waking up later. it has diddly squat with "peer pressure" and if you are drinking purely for that reason then you are either weak minded or drinking for very wrong reasons.
Reply 7
Original post by united.spammers
You ever tried refusing drinks on your birthday when an entire roomful of people are trying to get you bladdered? It requires the willpower of God himself.


If that's happening on a regular basis then someone's lying about when their birthday is.
Reply 8
Original post by united.spammers
You ever tried refusing drinks on your birthday when an entire roomful of people are trying to get you bladdered? It requires the willpower of God himself.


True but there have been plenty of night's when I haven't drunk anywhere near as much as my friends. And in some cases nothing at all.
Reply 9
University changed my sleeping habits many times.

-All-nighters
-Staying up till 5am for various reasons- friend hadn't come back from the library when she was meant to be back at 10pm etc
-Revision timetable involving waking at 5.30am daily for around 2 months
-Staying up late with friends
a study has been done on this recently, looking at young adult sleeping patterns. a lot of it is hormonal, particularly your melatonin production. Can't find the study, but there's a thing from the BBC website that discusses some similar research:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/emotions/teenagers/sleep.shtml
Try getting a job that requires you to wake up at 6am every morning. Sorted me right out...:frown:
I only finish work at 1/2am 4/5 days a week so I don't really have much choice sometimes.

Having acouple weeks holiday in June though and being able to go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 8:30 was sensational. Shame it couldn't last :frown:
I thought it was just me who struggled with having a more "normal" sleeping pattern!!

I can sleep for 12hours and this is pretty normal for me. I don't necessarily enjoy missing that much day time but if I don't set my alarm, it would seem that my body actually NEEDS that much sleep
I went through a phase of this when I was about 18, staying up until 4ish and waking up around 1pm... since moving in with my boyfriend about a year ago it's sorted itself out and now I sleep around 10/11pm and wake up around 8/9am. I prefer it because I don't feel as though I've wasted the morning :awesome: I do feel at my most creative at around 2amish though, which sucks
Reply 15
I hate it, I feel like I waste so much of the morning but I can't help it, it feels natural.
It's just the way our brains are.
I remember a psychology teacher telling me once that there is some very convincing research that says sixth formers and University students should not have to start earlier than 10 or 11 am. :awesome:
I don't know where to find that, though. :sad:
Luckily i've never been through this phase. always around 7/8am-10pm in the holidays :colondollar:
Reply 18
I love staying up late. It's the only peace I get, when everyone's buggered off to bed.

Even if I went to bed at 9pm, I'm still half-dead the next morning how matter how much sleep I get. :colonhash: At sixth form I barely said a word/ took anything in until past half ten. So why not?
See I think 10 is a late time to get up.

I have only done that recently because I spent 3 weeks getting up at half 6 normally up at 9ish on holiday which is still bad.

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