It’s no secret that college students are more likely to pick activities like studying and partying over sleeping.
Dedicated sleep advocate Arianna Huffington wants them to know that’s a choice they shouldn’t make.
“ ‘Sleep, grades, social life: Pick two.’ This motto, or some version of it, can be heard on college campuses across the country. It’s yet more evidence, as if we needed any, that college students today feel as if they’re in a no-win situation, forced to choose between sleep and life,” says Huffington, co-founder, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group and author of 15 books, including “The Sleep Revolution.”
This spring, Huffington took her message about the importance of sleep and the dangers of sleep deprivation to 50 schools around the country as part of The Huffington Post’s Sleep Revolution College Tour. Partnering with brands including Select Comfort’s Sleep Number, Cocomat, Land’s End, Sleep Shepherd and Sheex, the tour included sleep fairs, discussions and slumber parties designed to teach students better sleep habits and introduce them to helpful tools and products, such as eye masks, dream journals and white-noise machines.
“In recent years, there’s been a lot of attention given to the problems of binge drinking and drug use among high school and college students. But a 2014 study by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota showed that the effect of sleep deprivation on students’ academic performance is roughly equivalent to binge drinking and drug use,” Huffington wrote in a March 21 blog post announcing the tour. “What makes getting sleep in college much harder is FOMO — the fear of missing out.”
College is a time when many young people develop a habit they carry through life: Feeling like they can’t accomplish everything they want to and looking for something to jettison. Too often, sleep is the thing that’s cut.
Huffington hopes the tour will encourage students to “lead the way—for themselves, their classmates, and the rest of us—to the recognition that adequate sleep is essential for our health, our productivity, our relationships and our happiness.”
