With jobs, childcare, cleaning, family life, education and everything else taking up the bulk of our day, a lot of us can become guilty of a nighttime nasty…
No, not the copious amounts of biscuits you’re eating before bed. It’s called ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’.
What’s that, then? It’s when we ‘steal’ our quality time back by procrastinating into the night, but it can often take unhealthy forms, like scrolling TikTok for hours or watching too many episodes of your new favourite TV series.
And it has an impact on our sleep.
As the Sleep Foundation explains: “Although revenge bedtime procrastination can be tempting in the moment, late nights followed by early mornings can directly lead to serious sleep deprivation.
“Cutting back on sleep can have significant negative effects on mental, physical, and emotional health with short- and long-term consequences.”
With the hashtag reaching over 26.1 million views on TikTok, this unhealthy bedtime routine is clearly growing in popularity.
“This trend is a classic example of a safety behaviour – a habit we often fall into to soothe us or distract us from a feeling of anxiety and its cause,” explains Katherine Templar Lewis, an expert in behavioural psychology and lead scientist on The Uncertainty Experts.
Some of the most common behaviours, she suggests, are drinking wine, eating snacks, and scrolling on social media.
Revenge bedtime procrastination is thought to be linked to the ‘always on culture’ with people feeling the compulsion to always be checking emails and messages, especially when working from home, as a need to validate their time.
Why do we do it?
Well, there are a few theories.
- A need for some space and time to ourselves in an ‘always on’ digital work era.
- A need to feel more ‘in control’ when days are often spent feeling out of control as we are super connected and ‘always on’ – this is our time to call the shots.
- A safety behaviour used to distract from negative emotions caused by uncertainty anxiety, or to make us feel safe by soothing the initial anxiety or distracting you from it. But, very often, the behaviours aren’t particularly helpful in the long run, or end up causing more anxiety.
- An increase in uncertainty makes us seek more information to seek certainty, which can often be in the form of scrolling news online, etc.
Top tips for avoiding ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’
“If you need some evening time to yourself, read a book or listen to a podcast. They can help you switch off, will not increase stress through blue light, negative news (doomscrolling), and cycles of social validation,” explains Lewis.
It’s particularly important to avoid doomscrolling, as it “may lead to higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of mental well-being indicators (mental well-being, life satisfaction, and harmony in life),” says the expert.
If you want to release good chemicals, de-stress, and have time to yourself at night, she recommends: breathwork, yoga, and embodied practice, to help you de-stress and calm your mind so you don’t get stuck ruminating on worries at night.