Sleeping soundly: Australian bedtimes unchanged in decades

Dec 13, 2011, 7:37 GMT

Sydney - We hear it all the time: busy lives and computer gizmos mean people are getting by with less sleep.

That is an urban myth, Sydney University researcher Nicholas Glozier said Tuesday.

'There's no evidence that people are sleeping less,' he said. 'It does seem that sleep is an unchanging aspect of our lives.'

Glozier and his team pored over Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 1992, 1997 and 2006 and found that the average adult slept 8 hours and 20 minutes in 1992, 8:33 in 1997 and 8:30 in 2006.

'A 40-year-old Australian man doesn't sleep less than a 40-year-old man did 20 years ago,' he said.

There were minor difference, with adults over 65 a few minutes behind - as were those with higher education, higher income and more than two children in the household.

The findings, published in the December issue of the Medical Journal of Australia, are consistent with a Norwegian study published earlier this year.

A surprise for parents might be that adolescents are generally getting enough sleep. Smart phones, social media and computer games are not keeping them up after all.

'There is very little data that, over time, young adults are sleeping less,' Associate Professor Glozier said.

They sleep more at weekends, because 'you can't store sleep but you can catch up at weekends,' he said.

But sleep is very important. Earlier research by Glozier found that young adults sleeping fewer than 5 hours a night are three times more at risk of mental illness than those sleeping for 8 or 9 hours.