Study: College Students Trapped in ‘Vicious Cycle’ of Poor Sleep

College students know that adequate and good quality sleep is important for their overall health and well-being. Yet most students feel powerless to get good sleep in the face of competing life demands—even when they express a desire to prioritize sleep. That’s one conclusion of a new study on sleep and college functioning by Associate Professor of Psychology, Royette T. Dubar, and co-author, Danielle Greene.

The study, published in the journal, Emerging Adulthood, was conducted at Wesleyan in the fall of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors recruited students from the Class of 2024 and specifically interviewed participants who identified with at least one of several sociodemographic minority groups—racial/ethnic minority, sexual orientation minority/LGBTQ+, first-generation, low-income, religious minority, and gender non-binary. Past research has found that members of these groups may experience unique challenges to getting quality sleep.

In this context, Dubar and her team of undergraduate researchers launched an online interview study in which they asked participants to share their subjective experiences of sleep in the context of university life.

“We were specifically interested in how emerging adults thought about the barriers to getting good sleep and also the areas of their lives that they perceived to be most affected when they don’t get good sleep,” Dubar said.

Interview questions also asked students to share their beliefs about their ability to get good sleep, as well as the influence of the pandemic on their sleep behaviors.

Sleep Disrupters and Solutions

One overarching finding of the study was that the five factors that students said affected their sleep—academics, mental health, physical health, social life, and daily schedules—were also the same factors that they described as being affected by poor sleep. “Students felt that they weren't able to sleep because of their academic workload,” said Danielle Greene ’23, then a student researcher and study co-author. “On the flip side they felt that when they didn't get enough sleep, they couldn't focus in class.”

The students also felt somewhat helpless to address the problem. “Undergraduates from sociodemographic minority groups are perceiving their sleep and its consequences as a ‘vicious cycle,’—this circular effect that goes around and around,” said Greene. “Breaking that cycle appears to be pretty difficult for them.”

Compounding the challenge is the fact that the noted barriers to sleep—such as pressures from academics and social life—are also important for young adults’ overall development. “It's a bit heartbreaking to know that students feel disempowered to prioritize their sleep under the pressures of their academics and the demands of their social lives,” said Dubar. “At the same time, from a developmental perspective, I have to say that prioritizing academics and hanging out or even go out to a party with friends are critical investments in one’s long-term well-being.

So how can college students get the sleep they need? The researchers suggest that it takes a village. For example, future studies should investigate the “culture of sleep,” at university, as well as the role that institutions of higher education can play in helping students feel more empowered to change their relationship to sleep. “If students are operating under the belief that their entire day is inevitably ruined after a night of poor sleep, then that's a really interesting and important opportunity to think about reframing expectations about your sleep,” said Dubar.

Therapeutic approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, could help students with this reframing. Additionally, “there are also opportunities for colleges and universities to incorporate information on sleep beliefs and myths into their orientation materials if they're trying to get college students to sleep better,” said Greene.

The findings have inspired Dubar’s next study to explore how college students rank sleep among other life priorities and norms about when they intentionally choose to sacrifice sleep. “We're really trying to dig deeper to understand not just how an individual reports sleep in terms of their duration and quality, but how does the sleep experience relate to the social and cultural environment, especially in the context of university where academic performance and peer relationships are so critical for identity development and general well-being,” said Dubar.