Why Aren’t Adults 18–35 Getting Enough Sleep?
How social media, bedtime habits, FoMO and ADHD may be changing the way a generation winds down.
Sleep deprivation is often discussed as though the problem is simple.
· People are busy.
· They work long hours.
· They have children.
· They drink too much caffeine.
· They stay up too late.
But there is another question worth asking:
Why are so many adults between 18 and 35 finding it difficult to actually disconnect and go to sleep?
This is a generation that grew up during a dramatic change in how we communicate, socialize and entertain ourselves. For many, social media became part of adolescence.
Smartphones followed.
Notifications became constant.
Being socially connected became possible 24 hours a day.
And like that, bedtime changed. Or did it purposely evolve?
Instead of signalling that the day was ending, bedtime could become another opportunity to connect, scroll, watch, respond, compare, seek information and stay socially engaged.
Could some of the sleep difficulties we see in young adults be connected to habits that were established years earlier?
The research does not yet prove a simple cause-and-effect relationship. But there are enough pieces of the puzzle to make the question worth exploring.
The 18–35 age group grew up during a major technological shift
Adults aged 18–35 today did not all grow up with social media in exactly the same way.
Someone who is 35 had a very different adolescence from someone who is 18. Some experienced adolescence before smartphones were everywhere. Others experienced their teenage years during the rapid expansion of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social platforms.
The youngest adults in this group may have had smartphones and social media throughout much of their adolescent development. That matters because adolescence is also a period when habits, routines, social identity and self-regulation are developing.
For some young people, social media did not simply become something they used.
It became part of how they socialized, relaxed, entertained themselves and ended the day.
When bedtime becomes connected to the phone
Consider a typical adolescent bedtime routine.
· They get into bed.
· They pick up their phone.
· They check messages.
· They scroll.
· They watch a video.
· Someone comments.
· They receive a notification.
· They see something interesting.
· They experience connection, novelty, entertainment or validation.
This can keep us engaged and doom scrolling for hours. Useless hours connected to cat videos, seemingly meaningful quick tictoks, youtube shorts, “insta-perfect” posts. Algorithm’s keeping us engaged to entertain only. The dopamine loop is engaged and it’s hard to break free.
Then they do it again the next night.
The sequence becomes: Bed → phone → social media → reward
Repeated often enough, this behaviour can become increasingly habitual.
The teenager may eventually stop thinking about whether they are going to use their phone. Getting into bed simply triggers the behaviour. And this is where habit formation becomes important. The habit is reengaged upon waking.
Habits from adolescence can become a natural part of the adult nighttime routine.
The mind now starts to impart the dopamine engagement into a nightly habit.
“This is how I wind down.” (Thinking in absolutes) Or “ This is the only way I can wind down” (all of nothing thinking) not realizing it’s doing the opposite.
One of the most interesting questions is what happens when this adolescent becomes an adult.
· The person leaves high school.
· Move away from home.
· Start university.
· Begin a career.
· Enter a relationship.
· Become a parent.
· Their life changes dramatically.
But the bedtime routine may not.
Bed → phone → social media remains.
The adult may genuinely want to sleep. They may know they should put their phone down. They may even feel exhausted. Yet they continue scrolling.
Why?
Because the behaviour may no longer be entirely conscious. It has become part of the transition into bedtime. The brain has learned: Bedtime = phone. Dopamine engagement at bedtime can be a hard habit to break.
FoMO: Why is it so difficult to disconnect?
There is another factor that makes social media different from many older forms of entertainment. There is always something happening or a friend may have posted, and self-talk starts “If I don’t comment, like or engage I’m a bad friend”. Or maybe someone may have responded to my post. A conversation may be continuing. There may be new news. New videos. New comments. New messages. New social information.
The “What if’s” creep in…, this creates Fear of Missing Out, or FoMO.
The problem with FoMO is that the world does not actually end when we disconnect.
But psychologically, it can feel as though something important might happen while we are gone.
For a young person who has learned to stay socially connected through their phone, turning it off at bedtime can feel less like ending the day and more like temporarily leaving the social world. That can make disengagement difficult.
Then there is the ADHD question
This becomes particularly interesting when we consider ADHD.
People with ADHD can experience challenges with:
attention regulation
impulse control
reward sensitivity
stimulation
executive functioning
emotional regulation
shifting between activities
stopping something that is highly engaging
This does not mean everyone with ADHD has sleep difficulties, although most have issues with sleep. Falling asleep or staying asleep.
However, it does mean that the transition from an active, stimulating day to a quiet bedroom is particularly challenging for people with ADHD.
Imagine the difference between these two states:
Daytime
· Notifications
· People
· Work
· Conversation
· Movement
· Novelty
· Decisions
· Stimulation
Bedtime
· Quiet
· Darkness
· No demands
· No stimulation
· No immediate reward
· That is a significant state change
· The quiet becomes too much and engagement helps us disengage f from the day’s events
The phone may become a bridge between two states
This is where I think the ADHD connection becomes especially interesting and those us with ADHD, neurodivergence, bedtime can feel like:
“Everything is suddenly stopping.”
The phone provides a bridge. It allows the person to remain stimulated while technically being in bed. They are physically transitioning toward sleep, but their brain is still receiving the need for engagement:
novelty
information
social interaction
entertainment
reward
The phone effectively bridges: “I am still awake and stimulated.” To “I have to become quiet and go to sleep.”
This may help explain why simply telling someone with ADHD to “put the phone away” can be surprisingly ineffective. The phone may be serving a regulatory function.
From bedtime habit to bedtime procrastination
Eventually, the problem may become more than simply using a phone before bed.
It can become bedtime procrastination. The person knows they should sleep. They know they will be tired tomorrow. They may even feel exhausted. But they delay going to sleep anyway.
Just one more video. > Just one more episode. > Just one more scroll. > Just one conversation. > Just one check of social media.
The irony is that the person may be staying awake because they do not want the stimulation to end, while simultaneously knowing that they desperately need sleep.
For someone with ADHD, this can become particularly frustrating.
The sleep-ADHD cycle
And now another problem begins.
Poor sleep affects:
attention
working memory
emotional regulation
impulse control
executive functioning
frustration tolerance
boredom at any desk based task, increases the need to disengage, to the point where we feel we need a nap in order to get through our day
motivation
increased the need for caffeine, sugar and simple carbs to gain energy to get through out day
Those aspects of ADHD are enhanced with reduced sleep, which can make it much challenging day in and day out.
So we can end up with a reinforcing cycle:
Let’s be clear, social media does NOT cause ADHD.
Social media matches the need for stimulation in an ADHD brain. It can reinforce chronic low self-esteem, when the need validation comes from strangers on the internet. Consistency is our nemesis, combined All-or-Nothing Thinking can keep us in the habit connection loop: we try to change the habit, we do well for three days, then we miss a day, our thoughts instantly go to, “well, I blew — so why try, it’s hopeless.” And we’re back in a sleep-deprived, connected habitual loop, that we feel is hopeless to disengage from.
Problematic digital-media use and ADHD symptoms have a meaningful relationship, and poor sleep can make ADHD-related sleep difficulties more pronounced.
It isn't simply about “screen time”
This is an important distinction.
We often ask: “How many hours do you spend on your phone?”
But that may not be the most useful question.
Two people can spend three hours on their phones and have completely different relationships with that technology. These questions get closer to the function of the behaviour.
A better set of questions might be:
· Can you stop when you intend to?
· Do you feel compelled to check?
· Are you using social media when you are bored?
· Are you using it when you are anxious or emotionally uncomfortable?
· Do you use it to avoid the transition into sleep?
· Do you experience FoMO when you disconnect?
· Has your phone become part of your bedtime ritual?
· What happens when you put it down?
Did adolescence teach us how to go to bed?
This may be one of the most interesting questions for the 18–35 age group.
If a person repeatedly paired adolescence with:
Bed → phone → social connection → stimulation → reward
could that sequence become part of their learned bedtime behaviour?
We cannot currently say that research has proven this exact adolescent-to-adult pathway.
The evidence is stronger for individual pieces of the model:
problematic social-media use is associated with sleep problems
bedtime social-media use can contribute to delayed sleep
FoMO is associated with social-media engagement and sleep disruption
problematic smartphone/social-media use is associated with bedtime procrastination
ADHD symptoms are associated with problematic social-media use
sleep loss can worsen executive functioning and emotional regulation
What remains less clear is how much of an adult's current bedtime behaviour was learned during adolescence and carried forward as an automatic habit.
That is an important research question.
Perhaps we are looking at a generational sleep problem differently
There is a temptation to say: “Young people are addicted to their phones.”
That explanation is too simplistic and narrow in scope. We all are addicted to connection; it just so happens to come in a handheld device. So easy to engage, and light enough to hold for long periods of time.
How many times are you walking down a street or a set of stairs and the person in front of you is more engaged with their phone than their environment. Walking painfully slow, mindlessly, concentrating on the screen in front of them than the people around them. Frustratign for everyone around them, but they are oblivious to the chaos they are causing around them. No matter where I have travelled around the world, I have seen this everywhere and with all ages (except Japan).
The more compelling question is: What has the phone become a tool for?
For some people, it is connection. For others, entertainment. For others, reassurance.
For some people with ADHD, it may provide stimulation when the environment becomes too quiet. For someone experiencing anxiety, it may provide distraction.
For someone experiencing FoMO, it provides reassurance that they are still socially connected. And for many people, it has simply become what they do in bed.
That is very different from simply saying someone has “bad sleep habits.”
We may need to teach the transition, not just remove the phone
If someone has spent years using stimulation to transition into sleep, suddenly removing that stimulation may leave them with a problem:
What do I do instead?
The goal may therefore be less about simply taking something away and more about developing a new transition.
Instead of: High stimulation → phone → sleep
We can build: Stimulation → gradual downshift → regulation → quiet activity → bed → sleep
For someone with ADHD, this may be especially important. The nervous system may need a bridge. But the bridge does not have to be Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or endless scrolling.
It could be:
slow music
stretching
reading, lights low, read paper unstead of digital feeds, no page turners
a warm shower, a lounging bath
gentle sensory input
journalling
breathing exercises
a predictable wind-down routine
low-stimulation conversation, nothing that excites overthinking
another activity that provides enough engagement without keeping the brain highly activated
The goal is to re-educate the brain: “I can transition out of stimulation without needing an endless stream of stimulation.”
So, why aren't adults 18–35 getting enough sleep?
There is no single answer.
Work demands, lifestyle and stressors keep us engaged mentally. Mental health is certainly at the centre of all of this. Caffeine and diet contribute to sleeplessness. Relationships and rumination certainly are at the forefront.
But for a generation that grew up with increasingly constant digital stimulation, we also need to consider “What happened to bedtime itself?”
For many people, bedtime may no longer be the point at which stimulation ends. It may be the point at which another kind of stimulation begins. And for adults with ADHD, that transition may be particularly difficult.
Dr Amen has claimed that women with ADD/ADHD need to sleep with stories, shows or some kind of music playing to help them relax enough to fall asleep. For them engagement is different. Its white, brown or pink noise that allows them shut down, keep their mind busy on something else to engage in sleep.
The question may therefore not simply be:
“Why won't we disengage?”
It may be: “What has the engagement been doing for us at bedtime that makes it too hard to disconnect?”
And perhaps the next question is even more important: “What can we teach the brain to do instead?” Because sometimes the problem is not simply the connection. It’s the distraction from life, thoughts, anxieties and stress. Learning better coping strategies can help build better night time habits, based on how your ADHD shows up for you.
Bibliography / References
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Although there is not one study as proving that today's 18–35-year-olds are getting less sleep because they grew up with social media.
Research increasingly shows relationships among problematic digital-media use, bedtime procrastination, FoMO, pre-sleep cognitive arousal, ADHD symptoms and sleep difficulties. What remains largely unanswered is whether bedtime habits established during adolescence are carried into adulthood and contribute to the sleep difficulties experienced by today's 18–35 age group.
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