CHINA / SOCIETY
More than half of young Chinese stay up late: report
Published: Nov 29, 2021 10:38 PM
Young people in Wuhan dance to trendy electronic music at a local night club Friday, a seemingly ordinary start to the weekend. Photo: Cui Meng/GT

Young people in Wuhan dance to trendy electronic music at a local night club Friday, a seemingly ordinary start to the weekend. Photo: Cui Meng/GT


 
The biggest lie to yourself might be "I must go to sleep early tonight!" When the night comes, leisure activities such as watching dramas, shopping online and playing computer games can make it hard to switch off. This is the true picture of modern young Chinese people, according to a recent report. 

The report was carried out by financial media outlet 36Kr. It was based on a sample of 1,857 Chinese people, with 66.88 percent male and 33.12 percent female respondents, from the post-1980 to the post-2000 generation. About 82.2 percent were working and the other 17.8 percent were students. 

The report shows that 80.1 percent of Chinese young people think that staying up after midnight constitutes staying up late, and 61.4 percent think that being an early bird is ideal. 

But 69.1 percent go to sleep after midnight, with 33.2 percent staying up until 1am. The number of young people who go to sleep before 11pm was only 5 percent.

Wu Yu, a 28-year-old white collar worker based in Beijing, told the Global Times that she has to work hard during the day and only the nighttime belongs to her. She said she likes watching dramas and variety shows to relax at night.

"Time flies. It's usually at or after midnight that I watch my favorite show," she said, adding that the earliest time she would go to bed is at midnight. 

The report showed that 71.61 percent of young Chinese stay up late to watch dramas and short videos, 51.16 percent go online surfing China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo and question-and-answer website Zhihu, while 32.9 percent play games, and 26.97 percent work overtime. 

Those working in the internet and finance industries ranked second and third among those most likely to be night-owls, with freelancers leading the rankings on 79.31 percent.

Singles are also more likely to stay up late.

"You might think this is ironic, but my current life is to stay up late while buying expensive skin care products to prevent myself from aging," a 30-year-old woman surnamed Li told the Global Times.

Experts said people who stay up late are more likely to have worse memory, a bad temper and tend toward being overweight.