Generation Z

Zombies, we now have a growing generation of it. I must confess I am being zombified. This is because of the lack of sleep due to excessive waste of time online. Included in the generation are teenagers and some adults who spend extensive period at night staying online.

To my part, I begin to notice the consequence of this elective sleep deprivation. Every time that I am at work, I stammer, spell some words incorrectly, type with more errors, space out in between and forget my personal things, like that of my flash disk still plugged in my classroom workstation (lost three already). Further, I get to feel some muscle twitches, pains in the muscle around my eyes, neck pains and the sense of being afloat.

Whenever, I lack sleep, I get to drink several cups of coffee the next day, that I could smell the aroma from my pee. I get fatigue, so I get more prone to stress and anger. When I don't sleep I smoke more in my front of my desktop. Am I really working at night at my best as nocturnal?

I reason that way, that I am a night person and that nighttime is just best for me to work while others are asleep in the house so no one's going to disturb me. But, I am not really working till dawn when I am in front of the computer. I am just surfing, chatting, looking and watching. Many of the things I do with the Internet are not even important at all to my career.

Zombified online, that's what I have become. I recall the same situation even before I had Internet access when I work with the computer. It just doesn't make me sleep. Perhaps, the visual stimulation that the screen gives keeps my brain to be working that only until I have turned it off that I would feel the fatigue, in my eyes and in my body.

Before the computers some 20 years ago, I would rather sleep at 8 or 9 at night and wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning to study my lessons, review for exams and work on my assignments. With enough sleep my body is alert through out my classes and I get to see myself happier and livelier. I could not blame the power of technology as it is important to make our tasks more efficiently. I have to look into my routine with using technology.

I can not let myself and my life be ruled and ruined by my routine of staying online and depriving my self of sleep. But, this way of thinking is not commonly shared by the many younger generation nowadays. The zombie generation among the teens need some prodding from their concerned parents to guide them and to help them devise a more productive routine.

Studies show that insomnia does not come out without a cause, that it results from sleep deprivation due to other factors like stress or excessive work and others. I have several students who tell me that they could not sleep at night because they have insomnia, but then they get to sleep early in the morning for a few hours before they go to school. Insomnia is not an elective sleep disorder, it is a bodily reaction to abnormal sleeping.

Lately, I notice that my students are either hyperactive, dull, uninterested, lacking self-control, sleepy or just tired. In one of my lecture, I gave them the rule of thirds in budgeting their time, that 1/3 of their daily life or weekly life must be sent to give their body and brain some rest through sleeping 8 hours a day. I explained that sleeping that much is necessary for them.

Studies show that sleeping time need varies but the amount of healthy sleep for any person should be between 6.5 - 8 hours. Other studies also tell specific night hours for a healthy sleep, right before and after midnight, from 9 pm to 5 am. To my shock I discovered that my students are not sleeping the way they ought to because throughout the night they are online.

Being a member of their online group, I could receive popping message from several students at 2 am or 3 am, while their class the next day is at 8 am. They are online for no reason at all. They tell me that they are doing their school stuffs online. That should please me as their academic adviser, but when reports got to my hands, many of them have incomplete online activities and they don't even do well in their online exams.

I could assume that I have a Generation Z type of z-tudents, who are merely z-urfing the net for their z-elf z-atisfaction. Sadly, they are not aware of the implications of their sleep deprivation, that they don't even realize that they are walking zombies at day time. With that, no matter how active the learning experience is given them, at the little, their memory of things taught them z-imply z-lump. They may not zzzz-nor in the class, but their mind is just zapped and z-paced out that they become zoupy in when they try to think with wide eyes open.

It would hurt, that the generation Z type of students seem z-tupid that they z-leep in the class, or just z-hut their brains from working though their eyes are open. Thus, in an opportunity I had to meet with my students parents, I boldly asked them if they know what time their children sleeps. One parent said his daughter sleeps at 11 or 12 and wakes up at 5:30. That leaves the child sleeping for around 5.5 hours, 30 minutes less than the minimum healthy sleep time.

I have no idea, for how long this routine has been going on with my students. But, I just have to make a daring advise to parents to compel their children not to lock their rooms at night, and unplug the Internet connection, get their communication gadgets from their hold, simply to ensure that the students will get to sleep right. For me, I have started opening the window blinds during my class to kill the zombie out of me and my students.

Though, at my age now, I am thinking that it is a misnomer that sleep hour requirement decline as one ages. I feel I need that healthy sleep all the more. So, I'll be adjusting my routine and start sleeping 2 hours earlier before midnight and wake up before the sun rises. Well, studies also tell that those who sleep healthily live longer, happier, healthier, with higher productivity and better personality. Zzzzzzzzzzz.