This Is What Makes People Lose the Most Sleep

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 11, 7:30AM EST

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This Is What Makes People Lose the Most Sleep — © OcusFocus / Getty Images

How much sleep do people need? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sleep requirements vary by age. A child aged 3 to 5 years old needs 10 hours to 13 hours. A person 65 or older needs 7 to 8 hours.

What are known as “sleep disorders” can have serious consequences. Some of these disorders include insomnia and sleep apnea (also known as snoring). Among the most dangerous consequences are drowsy driving, a significant cause of accidents. The CDC data also shows that the amount of sleep people get varies from state to state and country to county.

A new list of the major reasons people lose sleep from mattress maker and retailer PlushBeds is based on data from 1,003 respondents queried through Amazon MTurk. Of those participants, 56% were men and 44% were women.

The foundation of the study was “Whether it’s politics, public health, personal finance, or family relationships, there’s no shortage of issues to be concerned about. The average person only has so much mental bandwidth, so it makes sense that something—in this case, sleep—has to give.”
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The most common sleep stressor was “current political events,” which affected 65.9% of those polled. The portion of people who worry about this and do not get adequate sleep was 30.4%.

Next on the list of concerns was personal finances at 60.9% of those asked. Of these, 34.3% do not get adequate sleep. The list also includes worries about problems related to COVID-19 and the stock market.

People were also divided into categories of when sleep disturbances happen. Of these, 50.7% had trouble getting to sleep, 49.6% get up at night and 49.0% cannot stay asleep.

These are the 20 most common sleep stressors:

Current political events (65.9%)
Personal finances (60.9%)
Political leadership (60.0%)
Unvaccinated individuals (55.5%)
Supply chain issues (54.6%)
Family relationships (54.3%)
Work-life balance (53.1%)
Personal health issues (51.7%)
Holiday spending (49.7%)
Searching for a new job (49.4%)
Partner or significant other (48.4%)
Contracting COVID-19 (46.6%)
Housing markets (45.8%)
Upcoming holiday events (45.3%)
Vaccination mandates (44.6%)
Current job market (44.0%)
Children (43.7%)
Getting the COVID-19 vaccine (40.05%)
Favorite sports teams (39.2%)
Cryptocurrency markets (39.2%)
Stock market (38.7%)
NFT market (35.9%)

Click here to see America’s most sleep-deprived city.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.