Author(s) :

Jiabei Chen .

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Adolescent sleep health has become a critical public health and educational concern globally, particularly among Chinese adolescents facing intense academic pressure—an issue linked to impaired attention, memory, and emotional regulation. This study aims to fill these gaps by defining sleep shame, developing a measurement tool, and examining its mechanisms and implications among Chinese adolescents. Using a mixed-methods design, we synthesized quantitative data from a survey of 2,022 Chinese adolescents and qualitative insights from 25 semi-structured interviews with students, parents, and teachers. Key quantitative findings reveal that sleep shame manifests in four core dimensions: moral anxiety, self-denial, social comparison, and concealment. Additionally, 39% linked rest to “lack of diligence” and 27% equated more sleep with “failure.” Statistical analyses confirm that academic pressure is positively correlated with sleep shame, sleep shame is associated with shorter sleep duration and poorer subjective sleep quality, and sleep shame partially mediates the relationship between academic pressure and sleep outcomes. Qualitative findings further identify systemic roots, including cultural narratives celebrating diligence, competitive educational settings, and intergenerational transmission of “less rest = hard work” beliefs. The study concludes that sleep shame is a socio-cultural phenomenon rather than an individual issue. Effective interventions must move beyond individual-focused tools and adopt a holistic “environment-culture-service” model to reconstruct a societal culture that values rest as a prerequisite for well-being and productivity. These findings provide a conceptual framework and measurement tool for sleep shame, offering actionable insights for educators, families, and policymakers to support adolescent sleep health.