Published September 12, 2026. Updated September 12, 2026.
You know the exact time you meant to turn the light off, and you know the time it actually happened, and the gap between them is not explained by anything that stopped you. Researchers gave that gap a name in 2014: bedtime procrastination, going to bed later than you intended when nothing external is in the way. The studies that measured it are smaller and more specific than the phrase’s current popularity suggests, and this page states what each one actually found.
Key takeaways
- In a 2014 online sample of 177 adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, self-reported bedtime procrastination correlated at -0.52 with self-regulation, and nearly 30 percent reported six hours of sleep or less on weeknights (Kroese et al., 2014).
- In the same 2014 online sample of 177 adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, 84 percent reported feeling they had slept too little or felt tired at least once a week (Kroese et al., 2014).
- A representative sample of 2,431 Dutch adults, published in the 2016 follow-up study (fielding date not stated in the indexed text; 2016 is the publication year), showed bedtime procrastination acting as the mechanism connecting weaker self-regulation to insufficient sleep at the population level (Kroese et al., 2016).
- A qualitative interview study of 17 self-identified frequent bedtime procrastinators, published in 2019, sorted their reasons into three categories: deliberate procrastination, mindless procrastination, and strategic delay tied to difficulty falling asleep (Nauts et al., 2019).
- Among 400 Portuguese high school students surveyed online, mean age 16.56, more bedtime procrastination was linked to later waking time and later dinner hours; fieldwork date not stated in the paper, and 2020 is the publication year (Magalhaes et al., 2020).
- Among 1,550 Chinese undergraduates, bedtime procrastination independently predicted poor sleep quality, which affected 39.42 percent of the sample on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; fieldwork date not stated in the available text, and 2022 is the publication year (the article first appeared online in 2020) (Ma et al., 2022).
- The label “revenge bedtime procrastination” translates the Chinese phrase 報復性熬夜 (baofuxing aoye); linguist Victor Mair’s Language Log post, dated July 2, 2020, traced the phrase’s spread to a tweet by journalist Daphne K. Lee (Mair, 2020).
- A 1,000-person Amerisleep survey fielded before its May 7, 2025 publication found 51 percent of respondents said putting off sleep helped them reclaim control over their time, a vendor survey with no academic sampling frame behind it (Amerisleep, 2025).
How to cite this page
APA: Eduard, S. (2026, September 12). Bedtime procrastination statistics: How common going to bed late really is. Stumble Toward the Light. https://stumbletowardthelight.com/bedtime-procrastination-statistics/
MLA: Eduard, Sebastian. “Bedtime Procrastination Statistics: How Common Going to Bed Late Really Is.” Stumble Toward the Light, 12 Sept. 2026, stumbletowardthelight.com/bedtime-procrastination-statistics/.
The source table
| # | Statistic | Data collected | Source type | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bedtime procrastination correlated -0.52 with self-regulation among 177 adults recruited online | 2014 | primary study | Kroese et al., 2014 |
| 2 | Nearly 30% of that 177-person sample reported 6 hours of sleep or less on weeknights | 2014 | primary study | Kroese et al., 2014 |
| 3 | 84% of that sample felt they had slept too little or felt tired at least once weekly | 2014 | primary study | Kroese et al., 2014 |
| 4 | 2,431 Dutch adults, a sample built to represent the general population, showed bedtime procrastination mediating the link between self-regulation and insufficient sleep | 2016 (publication year; the paper’s own fielding date is not visible in its indexed abstract) | primary study | Kroese et al., 2016 |
| 5 | 17 frequent bedtime procrastinators, interviewed in depth, described their delay as deliberate, mindless, or strategic (tied to trouble falling asleep) | 2019 | primary study | Nauts et al., 2019 |
| 6 | 400 Portuguese high school students, mean age 16.56, 139 male: more bedtime procrastination linked to later waking time and later dinner hour | Fieldwork date not stated; 2020 is the publication year | primary study | Magalhaes et al., 2020 |
| 7 | Same 400-student sample: more while-in-bed procrastination (delay after lying down) linked to being male and later desired sleep time | Fieldwork date not stated; 2020 is the publication year | primary study | Magalhaes et al., 2020 |
| 8 | 1,550 Chinese undergraduates: 39.42% scored as poor sleepers on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, with bedtime procrastination an independent predictor of both prevalence and severity | Fieldwork date not stated in the available text; 2022 is the publication year (article first appeared online in 2020) | primary study | Ma et al., 2022 |
| 9 | Term “revenge bedtime procrastination” (报复性熬夜) traced by Language Log to a tweet by Daphne K. Lee, translating a Chinese phrase for staying up to reclaim personal time | Language Log post dated July 2, 2020; the tweet’s own date is not confirmed in the retrieved text | derived (circulation-chain investigation) | Mair, 2020 |
| 10 | 51% of 1,000 surveyed Americans said delaying sleep helps them reclaim control over their time | 2025 | vendor survey | Amerisleep, 2025 |
| 11 | 96% of 2,000 surveyed Americans said they intentionally stay up late for personal time, averaging 3.5 nights a week | Fielded December 10-15, 2025 | vendor survey | Talker Research, 2025, reported by Scripps News |
Bedtime procrastination statistics: how common is it?
There is no single national prevalence rate for bedtime procrastination, the behavior researchers named in 2014. The studies that measure it use a continuous score on a validated scale, with no diagnostic cutoff attached to it. This page narrows the procrastination statistics hub down to the sleep-specific research. The clearest population-level evidence comes from a representative sample of 2,431 Dutch adults, published in the 2016 follow-up study (fielding date not stated in the indexed text), where bedtime procrastination carried the statistical link between weaker self-regulation and insufficient sleep across the general population (Kroese et al., 2016). The founding 2014 study, a smaller online sample of 177 adults recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, found the same pattern at the individual level: people with lower self-regulation reported delaying bedtime more, and 84 percent said they had slept too little or felt tired at least once in the past week (Kroese et al., 2014). Neither figure answers “what percentage of adults procrastinate at bedtime.” The scale used produces a continuous score for each respondent, and a score is a different kind of measurement than a yes-or-no count.
How common is revenge bedtime procrastination?
No study has measured how many people engage in what the public calls “revenge bedtime procrastination,” a phrase that entered English circulation only after Language Log documented it on July 2, 2020 (Mair, 2020). The phrase names a motive, reclaiming lost personal time, and a motive is harder to screen for in a survey than a behavior. The term traces to the Chinese phrase 報復性熬夜 (baofuxing aoye), which circulated online in China to describe people staying up late to reclaim personal time after a day with none of it. Linguist Victor Mair’s Language Log post, dated July 2, 2020, traced the phrase’s spread into English through a tweet by Taipei- and New York-based journalist Daphne K. Lee (Mair, 2020). The academic bedtime-procrastination scale that Kroese and colleagues built in 2014 measures the behavior itself, delaying bedtime with no external cause. It asks nothing about a person’s motive, so it cannot confirm or deny any percentage attached to the “revenge” framing.
What is bedtime procrastination?
Bedtime procrastination is going to bed later than you intended, when no external circumstance is stopping you from going to bed on time (Kroese et al., 2014). That definition rules out shift workers whose schedules force a late bedtime and anyone kept up by a genuine obligation. It leaves the behavior researchers are actually studying: the choice, made in the moment, to stay awake past your own stated cutoff. A 2019 qualitative study interviewed 17 people who identified as frequent bedtime procrastinators and found three distinct reasons under that single label. Deliberate procrastination meant choosing to stay up because the person felt they deserved time for themselves. Mindless procrastination meant losing track of time inside an absorbing evening activity. Strategic delay meant staying up because going to bed earlier did not actually produce sleep, a pattern the study’s authors describe as closer to undiagnosed insomnia than to procrastination (Nauts et al., 2019). A person telling you “I procrastinate at bedtime” could mean any of the three, and the research so far has not measured how the three groups split in the general population.
Why do people procrastinate on sleep?
The self-regulation account is the field’s dominant explanation: bedtime procrastination behaves like other forms of procrastination, a short-term choice that trades a later cost for an immediate one, and people with weaker self-regulation make that trade more often (Kroese et al., 2014; Kroese et al., 2016). The 2019 interview study complicates a purely willpower-based story. Its mindless-procrastination category describes people who did not consciously decide to stay up; they lost track of time inside a phone, a show, or a conversation, and noticed the hour only afterward. Its strategic-delay category describes people whose late bedtime traces to an unrecognized sleep problem, with self-control playing little part in it (Nauts et al., 2019). In the Portuguese high school sample, more bedtime procrastination tracked with a later waking time and a later dinner hour, a pattern consistent with a shifted daily schedule (Magalhaes et al., 2020). Anyone whose bedtime delay traces to circling the same worry is describing a different mechanism, covered in procrastination and emotions.
How to stop bedtime procrastination
None of the studies behind this page tested an intervention, so no dated figure exists for how much any approach reduces bedtime procrastination. What research does support is matching the fix to the three delay patterns the 2019 interview study identified (Nauts et al., 2019). If the pattern is deliberate, the 2019 interview subjects who named it described a felt need for personal time that the day had not provided; the daytime shortage is what the account points toward addressing. If the pattern is mindless, the same study describes people who lost track of time inside an activity, which argues for removing the activity’s ability to run unnoticed, such as a phone with no natural stopping point. If the pattern is strategic, staying up because lying down earlier does not produce sleep, the sleep problem itself is the thing to address, and a conversation with a doctor is the appropriate next step. General procrastination mechanics, including the emotional-avoidance loop that also shows up at bedtime, are covered in why do we procrastinate and the procrastination cycle.
Does the phrase “revenge bedtime procrastination” describe a real disorder?
No diagnostic manual lists it, and no peer-reviewed study has adopted the phrase as a measured category. What is real and separately documented is bedtime procrastination as Kroese and colleagues defined and measured it in 2014 (Kroese et al., 2014) and 2016 (Kroese et al., 2016). The “revenge” framing adds a specific motive, reclaiming personal time taken by an overloaded day, that the academic scale does not ask about. A circulated claim and the underlying research can both be checked against each other, which the next section does with two vendor surveys that use the phrase.
Where the circulating “revenge bedtime procrastination” numbers come from
Two widely shared numbers describe how many people supposedly do this: 51 percent, from a 1,000-person Amerisleep survey fielded before its May 7, 2025 publication (Amerisleep, 2025), and 96 percent, from a 2,000-person survey commissioned by Avocado Green Mattress and conducted by Talker Research, fielded online December 10-15, 2025 (Talker Research, 2025, reported by Scripps News). Both are vendor surveys commissioned by companies that sell sleep products. Neither is an academic study with a published sampling method or a peer-reviewed instrument behind its percentage. Checkable fact one: the 2014 and 2016 studies that introduced bedtime procrastination as a research topic measured it with a validated scale scored continuously, and neither reports a percentage of the population who “have” the behavior in a yes-or-no sense. Checkable fact two: the 96 percent figure comes from a survey that asked respondents whether they intentionally stay up late for personal time, with those who said yes averaging 3.5 such nights a week; the reporting available on the survey does not state a specific frequency threshold for counting a “yes.” No single study has reconciled either vendor figure with the academic scale’s continuous score.
Methodology
Statistics here started from the two studies that introduced bedtime procrastination as a named research topic, Kroese et al. (2014) and Kroese et al. (2016), both already confirmed in this site’s citation ledger. From there, this page added the qualitative study that broke the single label into three distinct patterns (Nauts et al., 2019), two prevalence-adjacent samples from outside the Netherlands (Magalhaes et al., 2020, in Portugal; Ma et al., 2022, in China), and a traced account of where “revenge bedtime procrastination” came from and what the vendor surveys using that phrase actually measured (Mair, 2020; Amerisleep, 2025; Talker Research, 2025). Every study was read in its own abstract, full text, or indexed record. Where a paper’s fielding year was not visible in the available text, that gap is stated plainly next to the figure. Sources last verified 2026-09-13.
How to cite this page
APA: Eduard, S. (2026, September 12). Bedtime procrastination statistics: How common going to bed late really is. Stumble Toward the Light. https://stumbletowardthelight.com/bedtime-procrastination-statistics/
MLA: Eduard, Sebastian. “Bedtime Procrastination Statistics: How Common Going to Bed Late Really Is.” Stumble Toward the Light, 12 Sept. 2026, stumbletowardthelight.com/bedtime-procrastination-statistics/.
Frequently asked questions
How common is bedtime procrastination?
There is no single prevalence rate. The clearest population-level evidence is a representative sample of 2,431 Dutch adults, published in the 2016 follow-up study (fielding date not stated in the indexed text), in which bedtime procrastination linked weaker self-regulation to insufficient sleep across the general population (Kroese et al., 2016).
How common is revenge bedtime procrastination?
No academic study has measured this specific, motive-based framing. The phrase traces to a tweet by journalist Daphne K. Lee translating a Chinese term, first documented in a July 2, 2020 Language Log post (Mair, 2020), and the closest measured data come from vendor surveys with no published sampling method.
What is bedtime procrastination?
Going to bed later than you intended, with no external circumstance stopping you from an earlier bedtime (Kroese et al., 2014). A 2019 interview study found three distinct reasons underneath that single definition: deliberate delay, mindless delay, and strategic delay linked to trouble falling asleep (Nauts et al., 2019).
Why do I procrastinate on sleep?
The leading account treats it as a self-regulation trade-off, the same short-term mood management behind other procrastination (Kroese et al., 2014). A 2019 study found some people lose track of time in an evening activity with no conscious decision to delay, and others delay because sleep itself is not coming easily, a pattern closer to insomnia than procrastination (Nauts et al., 2019).
How do I stop bedtime procrastination?
No study has tested an intervention for bedtime procrastination, so no figure exists for how much any technique reduces it, per the 2019 interview study that mapped the patterns behind it (Nauts et al., 2019). The 2019 study’s three categories point toward three different responses: protecting daytime personal time for deliberate delay, removing an activity’s ability to run unnoticed for mindless delay, and a conversation with a doctor for strategic delay tied to difficulty sleeping (Nauts et al., 2019).
Related reading
- Procrastination Statistics: How Common It Is, and Why It Happens
- Why do we Procrastinate
- The Procrastination Cycle: Why It Keeps Repeating and How to Break It
References
Kroese, F. M., De Ridder, D. T. D., Evers, C., & Adriaanse, M. A. (2014). Bedtime procrastination: Introducing a new area of procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 611.
Kroese, F. M., Evers, C., Adriaanse, M. A., & de Ridder, D. T. D. (2016). Bedtime procrastination: A self-regulation perspective on sleep insufficiency in the general population. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(5), 853-862.
Nauts, S., Kamphorst, B. A., Stut, W., De Ridder, D. T. D., & Anderson, J. H. (2019). The explanations people give for going to bed late: A qualitative study of the varieties of bedtime procrastination. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 17(6), 753-762.
Magalhaes, P., Cruz, V., Teixeira, S., Fuentes, S., & Rosario, P. (2020). An exploratory study on sleep procrastination: Bedtime vs. while-in-bed procrastination. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(16), 5892.
Ma, X., Meng, D., Zhu, L., Xu, H., Guo, J., Yang, L., Yu, L., Fu, Y., & Mu, L. (2022). Bedtime procrastination predicts the prevalence and severity of poor sleep quality of Chinese undergraduate students. Journal of American College Health, 70(4), 1104-1111.
Mair, V. (2020, July 2). Revengeful staying up late at night. Language Log.
Osmun, R. (2025, May 7). Revenge bedtime procrastination: Why Americans are sacrificing sleep for personal time. Amerisleep.
Talker Research. (2025). Revenge bedtime procrastination could be costing you hours of sleep. Scripps News.