procrastinate

最近、"revenge bedtime procrastination"という言葉がは流行っているそうですが、ご存知でしょうか。

想像がつくと思いますが、COVID-19によるパンデミックと関連があります。

記事の引用をどうぞ。

After a long day of working from home, Hadly Clark spends her evening hours mindlessly swiping through her phone. She powers through her usual scheduled 9:30 p.m. bedtime in favor of online shopping and social media scrolling.

Before Clark knows it, the clock reads 1 a.m. She eventually dozes off and wakes up the next morning exhausted, her phone on her nightstand blaring her alarm at 6 a.m.

This cycle of staying up late and regretting it the next day is all too familiar for many people, even before the pandemic. In recent years, the phenomenon has been dubbed "revenge bedtime procrastination."

Revenge bedtime procrastination may be a newer term, but the type of sleep schedule it describes is not, said Dr. Rajkumar Dasgupta, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

"Revenge bedtime procrastination is just a cry from overworked people, and they're actually trying to put off bedtime just a little bit so they can reclaim something for themselves," Dasgupta said.

(Megan Marples. 'Revenge bedtime procrastination' could be robbing you of precious sleep time. CNN. February 15, 2021.)

"revenge~"は、"revenge porn"や"revenge spending"でお馴染みかも知れません。

復讐、報復、恨みを晴らす、ということですが、パンデミックで外出や行動制限下にある人達がストレスのはけ口を見つけられず、夜中くらいは・・・と夜更かし傾向に至るというのが"revenge bedtime procrastination"の言わんとするところのようです。

別記事ですが、以下の引用は"revenge bedtime procrastination"の心理を分かりやすく説明しています。

The phrase, which could also be translated as ‘retaliatory staying up late’, spread rapidly on Twitter in June after a post by journalist Daphne K Lee. She described the phenomenon as when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”.  

(The psychology behind 'revenge bedtime procrastination'. BBC News. November 26, 2020.)

長引く在宅勤務や外出制限による昼間のストレスを、夜遅くまで起きていることで解消しようとすることで、睡眠不足に陥り、ひいては健康面や精神面での悪影響をもたらす懸念があります。

"procrastinate"とは、遅延させること、ぐずぐずと引き延ばす、という意味ですが、ラテン語で「明日」を意味するcrasに、接頭辞pro-が付いたものです。

私は遅くとも夜11時には電気を消して寝るようにしています。午前零時を過ぎてしまうと、日付は変わってもう明日ということになりますからね。