There’s almost no better feeling in the world than waking up from a full night of restful sleep, but new research suggests those don’t happen very often at all. According to a new survey, the average American gets the “perfect” night’s sleep just 132 times a year and averages only 120 “good” sleeps.
So what about the rest of the year? The remaining 113 nights are “bad” for sleep, the survey of 2-thousand U.S. adults finds. Those can include waking up frequently, not being able to fall asleep or even staying awake all night.
The poll also reveals:
- Americans go to bed feeling stressed or anxious an average of three days every week.
- This stress keeps them awake for an extra three hours after they go to bed.
- Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents say a bad night’s sleep is enough to ruin the next day.
- That nighttime anxiety that’s keeping them up leads to them looking at their phone (59%), snacking (49%) and staring at the ceiling (39%), rather than snoozing.
- So what are they stressing about so much that it’s keeping them from sleep? For 58%, it’s worrying about their physical health, 56% stress about what they need to do the next day, while 51% are concerned about their mental health.
- The most popular remedies people have tried to help fall asleep include reading (44%), warm milk (42%), CBD (37%) and melatonin (29%).
- But only about a quarter (28%) of them actually find the method they use most often to be “very effective.”
- It’s not just sleep that’s negatively impacted by stress and anxiety, as respondents missed an average of nine different events because of it in 2023 alone.
- To get a “perfect” night’s sleep every night for a year, people would be willing to give up their WiFi (48%), their bed (43%) and even their indoor plumbing (41%).
Source: SWNS Digital
Photo: Getty