Rest?
Sorry, That Feature’s
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Sorry, That Feature’s
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You scroll another hour on Instagram, telling yourself, “I’ll just see one more post,” and boom — it's 3:17 a.m. again.
Why does “relaxing” always end up meaning “staying awake and uneasy”? The paradox here: in a world obsessed with self-care, “rest” has become harder than ever. So is it your fault that you can’t rest — or is the system rigged to make you sleepless?
Rest is the new competition
Somewhere between hustle culture and wellness culture, we managed to ruin sleep
What used to be a biological need became a performance metric — a thing you optimize. We brag about sleeping “a solid four hours” like it’s a TED Talk. Even our dreams are supposed to be monetized now: lucid dreaming, manifestation playlists, sleep-tracking apps that treat rest like a sport. Congratulations — you’re exhausted, but at least your smartwatch thinks you’re improving.
What used to be a biological need became a performance metric — a thing you optimize. We brag about sleeping “a solid four hours” like it’s a TED Talk. Even our dreams are supposed to be monetized now: lucid dreaming, manifestation playlists, sleep-tracking apps that treat rest like a sport. Congratulations — you’re exhausted, but at least your smartwatch thinks you’re improving.
We call it “self-care,” but it’s still capitalism in pajamas. The sleep mask just hides the same grindset underneath. We don’t rest to feel better; we rest to work better tomorrow. It’s not that we can’t sleep — it’s that we no longer remember why we should.
Let’s time-travel a bit. In preindustrial societies, chronic insomnia was rare — in some hunter-gatherer or agrarian groups, the concept of “not sleeping” as we moderns know it might not even exist. As the industrial era dawned, sleep became regimented: shift work, factory whistles, synchronized schedules. But only in the late 20th and early 21st centuries did sleeplessness morph into a cultural symptom.
In consumer capitalism, sleep has been commodified. “Great sleep” is marketed like any other luxury — sold in apps, mattresses, wellness retreats. Sociologists even speak of a “sleep industry” that peddles supplements, gadgets, and therapies. At the same time, the idea that less sleep = more hustle, more productivity is glorified. Getting by on minimal rest is often framed as a badge of honor.
Why is this resonant now? Because in 2025, virtually all of us are tethered to our phones, notifications never sleep, and the boundary between work and “off time” has collapsed. We’re told to “rest better” — but rarely given permission to just stop. The cultural script says you must optimize even your downtime, turning relaxation into another task to master. The result: guilt, failure, and insomnia.
What’s going on under the hood? At root: hyperarousal.
Clinical models of insomnia show that stress, anxiety about not sleeping, and behavioral patterns all conspire to keep your brain in an alert state. Your mind becomes its own worst alarm clock. Add to that “bedtime procrastination” — when you delay sleep intentionally (or unconsciously) to squeeze out some “you time” after a day of coercive obligations. This phenomenon is well documented and sometimes called revenge bedtime procrastination.
Social media and night-time screen use make this worse. Reviews of dozens of studies confirm that problematic use of social media is linked to later bedtimes, shorter sleep duration, and poorer sleep quality, often mediated by psychological distress. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram overuse correlates with insomnia, through emotional pressure and overstimulation. Blue light, FOMO, “just one more scroll” — all biological and psychological triggers for a brain that refuses to shut down.
In cultural terms, we must see sleep anxiety as a performance anxiety. You’re judged (by apps, wellness gurus, peer envy) if your “sleep score” is low. Enter orthosomnia — the obsession with perfect sleep metrics via trackers, which can perversely worsen insomnia. In that way, the quantified self turns rest into another metric to game and fail at.
We can also borrow from psychoanalysis and critical theory: anxiety in consumer culture often stems from the subject feeling eternally lacking — needing to consume more, to become more. Our compulsion to buy, swipe, compare, upgrade is interwoven with existential dread — which doesn’t rest at night. So insomnia is partly a symptom of a system that wants you awake, consuming, anxious.
Let’s make this real. In Neon Demon (2016) — visually dazzling, spiritually hollow — characters chase unattainable perfection, and sleep is always elusive. The film’s lurid aesthetic doubles as a nightmare: beauty as insomnia. In Black Mirror episodes like “Nosedive,” social validation is addictive, viewing metrics extend into mental space, and the pressure never lets you rest — literally or figuratively. Later in Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, the overlord drones never fade, even when you’re “off.”
In music: Lorde’s “Liability” whispers of nights spent awake in your head; Billie Eilish’s “when the party’s over” plays like an insomnia anthem — the soft disquiet of having to quiet your own brain. Kanye West, in “Runaway,” raps “Never was a problem / ’Til I started playing myself,” a hint at restless self-reflection. In memes: the “3 AM thoughts” meme culture proliferates — everyone jokes they’ve done lifetime’s worth of existential crisis between 2 and 4 a.m. That’s the communal insomnia aesthetic.
Even celebrity confessions: Elon Musk has said he sleeps few hours. Writers like Adam Gopnik frame insomnia as a secret society membership — the ones awake see the machinery others don’t. So insomnia is romanticized in high art, cynical in late-night tweets, and monetized in wellness Instagram posts.
We’re past the era when insomnia was merely a clinical oddity. In 2025, it’s a public mental health crisis. Insomnia’s consequences: diminished cognition, mood disorders, metabolic risks, impaired decision-making. Beyond individuals — socially, it degrades empathy, attention, creativity. A fog of fatigue makes us less resilient to systemic stress.
In the social media epoch, the restless brain is the ideal consumer: awake, scrolling, anxious, primed for ads. If you’re tired, you buy stimulants, supplements, trackers, alarms. If you’re restless, you sign up for classes on “better sleep” — which are themselves packaged for consumption.
Ignoring the problem is letting the cultural logic win: people will accept sleeplessness as “normal,” with blame pinned internally (“I’m broken”) instead of systemically. That internalization demonizes us — “bad sleeper,” “lazy,” “less disciplined.” The cost: mental health collapse, burnout, diminished collective capacity to question the system that refuses to let us rest.
In consumer capitalism, sleep has been commodified. “Great sleep” is marketed like any other luxury — sold in apps, mattresses, wellness retreats. Sociologists even speak of a “sleep industry” that peddles supplements, gadgets, and therapies. At the same time, the idea that less sleep = more hustle, more productivity is glorified. Getting by on minimal rest is often framed as a badge of honor.
Why is this resonant now? Because in 2025, virtually all of us are tethered to our phones, notifications never sleep, and the boundary between work and “off time” has collapsed. We’re told to “rest better” — but rarely given permission to just stop. The cultural script says you must optimize even your downtime, turning relaxation into another task to master. The result: guilt, failure, and insomnia.
What’s going on under the hood? At root: hyperarousal.
Clinical models of insomnia show that stress, anxiety about not sleeping, and behavioral patterns all conspire to keep your brain in an alert state. Your mind becomes its own worst alarm clock. Add to that “bedtime procrastination” — when you delay sleep intentionally (or unconsciously) to squeeze out some “you time” after a day of coercive obligations. This phenomenon is well documented and sometimes called revenge bedtime procrastination.
Social media and night-time screen use make this worse. Reviews of dozens of studies confirm that problematic use of social media is linked to later bedtimes, shorter sleep duration, and poorer sleep quality, often mediated by psychological distress. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram overuse correlates with insomnia, through emotional pressure and overstimulation. Blue light, FOMO, “just one more scroll” — all biological and psychological triggers for a brain that refuses to shut down.
In cultural terms, we must see sleep anxiety as a performance anxiety. You’re judged (by apps, wellness gurus, peer envy) if your “sleep score” is low. Enter orthosomnia — the obsession with perfect sleep metrics via trackers, which can perversely worsen insomnia. In that way, the quantified self turns rest into another metric to game and fail at.
We can also borrow from psychoanalysis and critical theory: anxiety in consumer culture often stems from the subject feeling eternally lacking — needing to consume more, to become more. Our compulsion to buy, swipe, compare, upgrade is interwoven with existential dread — which doesn’t rest at night. So insomnia is partly a symptom of a system that wants you awake, consuming, anxious.
Let’s make this real. In Neon Demon (2016) — visually dazzling, spiritually hollow — characters chase unattainable perfection, and sleep is always elusive. The film’s lurid aesthetic doubles as a nightmare: beauty as insomnia. In Black Mirror episodes like “Nosedive,” social validation is addictive, viewing metrics extend into mental space, and the pressure never lets you rest — literally or figuratively. Later in Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, the overlord drones never fade, even when you’re “off.”
In music: Lorde’s “Liability” whispers of nights spent awake in your head; Billie Eilish’s “when the party’s over” plays like an insomnia anthem — the soft disquiet of having to quiet your own brain. Kanye West, in “Runaway,” raps “Never was a problem / ’Til I started playing myself,” a hint at restless self-reflection. In memes: the “3 AM thoughts” meme culture proliferates — everyone jokes they’ve done lifetime’s worth of existential crisis between 2 and 4 a.m. That’s the communal insomnia aesthetic.
Even celebrity confessions: Elon Musk has said he sleeps few hours. Writers like Adam Gopnik frame insomnia as a secret society membership — the ones awake see the machinery others don’t. So insomnia is romanticized in high art, cynical in late-night tweets, and monetized in wellness Instagram posts.
We’re past the era when insomnia was merely a clinical oddity. In 2025, it’s a public mental health crisis. Insomnia’s consequences: diminished cognition, mood disorders, metabolic risks, impaired decision-making. Beyond individuals — socially, it degrades empathy, attention, creativity. A fog of fatigue makes us less resilient to systemic stress.
In the social media epoch, the restless brain is the ideal consumer: awake, scrolling, anxious, primed for ads. If you’re tired, you buy stimulants, supplements, trackers, alarms. If you’re restless, you sign up for classes on “better sleep” — which are themselves packaged for consumption.
Ignoring the problem is letting the cultural logic win: people will accept sleeplessness as “normal,” with blame pinned internally (“I’m broken”) instead of systemically. That internalization demonizes us — “bad sleeper,” “lazy,” “less disciplined.” The cost: mental health collapse, burnout, diminished collective capacity to question the system that refuses to let us rest.
- Delete or quarantine the “just one more scroll” apps — make your phone hard to access at night (outside bedroom, grayscale mode, etc.).
- Use paradoxical intention: tell yourself, “I will stay awake,” to break the performance anxiety. It’s a real technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy.
- Embrace nonproductive rest (do nothing) — silence, stillness, nothing to optimize. Resist the impulse to monetize your downtime.
