When Can We Dream a Dream?

When we were young we expected for what will be appear before sleeping. However, these days, nost children just repeat a routine that is densely structured without enough sleep. They don't have enough time to look back on their day, and they can't wonder wat to do with friends at school because they have to do their daily duties like going to academies, and playing a computer game. There are schoolchildren, middle school students who are preparing to enter high school, high school students who are struggling at scholastic ability tests, ad university students whio have to do assignments and build their own careers. Besides, most of the adults and office workers by night, and they are sleep-deprived. When can we be free from overworked-eyes? When can we fall asleep expecting what we will dream about?

Sleep Deprivation, It Is Choking Our Life

A Korean adult sleeps an average of 6 hours and 15 minutes, making Korea the world’s second or third most sleep-deprived country. Koreans are the most sleep-deprived people among OECD member countries’ people and 7 out of 10 people sleep after midnight. 1 Also the phrase like ‘Dreaming the sleep,’ as well as adults, adolescents can’t sleep for enough time. Among the schoolchildren, the boys answered ‘computer game (34%),’ and the girls answered ‘study (33%)’ as the reasons of the sleep deprivation. 2 Schoolchildren who have to get enough sleep and have to live a well-regulated life think they can’t get enough sleep at night. So there is the law named Cinderella Law to shut down the game at a certain time to curb child addiction. This law bans adolescents who are under 16 from access to Internet games from midnight to 6 AM. But there still exists sleep deprivation among adolescents. Computer games disturb sleep, and the parents’ competition regarding private education puts a burden on children to study hard without sleep. Adults also have sleep deprivation. They are in mental instability, most of them live irregular lives with a heavy workload and overtime. However, people still do not realize the seriousness of sleep deprivation realistically. Especially during adolescence, the time when the balance of the body is formed, sleep deprivation can be the reason for obesity. Park Dongsun, a foreign professor at the Catholic University of Korea said, “When you can’t get enough sleep, there is a great possibility to become fat because of the decrease of hormone secretion which controls appetite and smelts the fat. Sleep deprivation decreases the body’s basal metabolic rate, so we can gain weight.” Besides, nine to ten hours for schoolchildren and eight to nine sleeping hours for middle and high school students can prevent sleep disorders and memory loss. 3 For adults, when they are sleep-deprived, concentration and memory reduction can lead to depression, diabetes, and heart disease. If we drive 17 hours without sleep, it is the same as driving with a BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) of 0.05 and if we drive 24 hours, it is same as driving drunk. From these findings, it stands to reason that it is a shortcut to death.

Children Who Don't Have Energy, Adults Who Are Exhausted

Suffering from exhaustion in the morning, we rap out some complaint habitually like “We don’t have time to sleep!” and we are negatively influenced by sleep deprivation. Why are people so pestered with sleep deprivation? Think about what you do at night time. Watching TV, playing computer games, there are many factors that disturb our sleep. The most serious factor in one study was cell phone addiction. The research by Gaby Badeure in Sahlgren Academy indicates adolescents who are addicted to cell phones suffer sleep disorders, insomnia, and irregular sleeping hours. 4 But there are essential reasons of sleep deprivation of people. These days, we live in a competitive society, and people neglect sleep. People are sleepdeprived, and they still think that doing various works is more important than sleep. So most of people don’t think they have to sleep, and from the elementary school life, the keen competition blocks the opportunity to play outside and fall asleep quickly. Being up all night becomes a tired but common routine, so the activity time extends to the night.

Especially, these days, most university students are absorbed in building their career and managing their grades. During exam period, it’s hard to find an empty seat at night in the library and students struggle with getting better grades. Jung, Department of Food & Nutrition ’11 said “From when I was in high school, I am still sleep-deprived and I think it is no wonder that I have to give up sleep. Many people say sleep deprivation makes us exhausted and uncomfortable, but in this tough competitive society, it is the second choice that we have to abandon.” To know the thinking of the people in this exhausted life, Dr. Jim Horne of the Sleep Research centre at Loughborough University asked, “Do you have sleep deprivation?” “Do you feel gather straws?” More than half of respondents said “Yes” for the first question, so Dr. Jim Horne asked, “What will you do when you have much free time?” But most of them didn’t answer, “I will sleep!” and they chose doing exercise, hanging out with their friends, watching TV, and reading books as more productive works than sleeping.5 Judging from this research, these days, people usually think they had meaningful day when they get their own activity time and spend scheduled time. These people consider sleeping as a time-wasting. This is irresponsible thinking because they recognize sleep as releasable thing, but they find the reason of fatigue.

The Restless Society at Night

In this social atmosphere, there are people who dominate all night. They are called homonightcu5*, and they go around or do something inside. With the increasing of these people, there are many 24-hour stores around us. 24-hour service restaurants appear and there are a lot of 24-hour fast-food restaurants. And the café TOM N TOMS COFFEE has the feature that most of the franchises operate for 24 hours. In these places, the people are studying, having a date with a partner, and there are people who have two-job and they eat their lunch at night. Especially, most of the guests are students who prepare for a test and employment. The society needs men of versatile talents, so university students usually take courses in the daytime, and they do parttime jobs or study at night in 24-hour cafés. The busy office workers and owner-operators who don’t have enough time in the day have to find their free time at night. These phenomena like the increase of the average working hours make people exhausted and tired. Still many people don’t see the irresponsibility in saying “I’m tired,” “I’m sleep-deprived,” but they just blame sleep deprivation without basic concerns about sleep in a tough competitive society. There can be such a thing as prolonged poison, but we don’t know yet.

We Are Dreaming of Being Sleep

Children do homework in the middle of the night, play computer games, and watch TV at midnight. Adolescents are absorbed in sending text messages, playing with smart phones, and they study at academies and school. Adults are drinking coffee, and they are struggling with their daily tasks and given works. Still it is considered as extravagance and another dream that there exists enough time for us to dream. Sleep feels to us so near and yet so far. With the extension of activity hours and the obsession of effective time distribution, they give themselves and their children to the hand of the clock which is ticking on. When we were young, we watched the sky before going to bed and expected sweet dreams. But now, children have broken sleep and they watch the blocked concrete
ceiling before sleep. We cannot just stare at sleep deprivation anymore. Of course, developing our talent and having various experiences is valuable. But why do you regard the sleep as unproductive? Dr. Paul Martin said, “Sleep is the dominant factor for humans and animals to keep life.” Sleep can let us take a rest, make enough good hormones, and restore some harmed cells. And when we dream, we can purify our mental stresses and arrange what we learned to record for long time. Sleeping time is not just rest time but the productive time that arranges and finishes what we did. After sleeping, we can memorize clearer than weeping all night because of the vitalization of the brain waves. There is a word that the true thinking faculties come through when we are sleeping. Sleep can’t be ignored as the second thing in modern society anymore, and the bad recognition as laziness about taking forty winks has to be understood. It is the last resistance of our body to protect us from the restless and competitive tough society.

Kim Jang Sooyoung / Reporter