Timothy Mah - Balancing Work and Rest in the 21st Century

Adolescent Health 

The problem that I am interested in related to adolescent health is electronics. The government should care because there has been a huge rise in electronics for the past decade. Kids grow up being surrounded by electronics all the time whether it be a tablet, smartphone, computer, toy, or video games. These people are also the ones who will grow up to become the future of our society. Due to how important they are to our future, adolescent development should matter a lot to everyone, not just families who already care about their kids. That being said, there has been a lot of talk about how electronics are affecting the mental states of developing children. It is a great thing that information is spreading about this topic, but there is an issue that has come along with it, misinformation. There is a lot of it going on and it can cause problems when it comes to decision making (Escalante 2020). This may lead to children growing up in a way that isn’t the best for them. In order to fix this problem, social media platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat could have better fact checking resources and search engines like Google could have fact checking tools to make sure the websites that show up aren’t making stuff up. Consumers of these sources should also be taught better how to make sure what they are reading is true. In school, we are taught sometimes about finding good sources but a study at Stanford has shown that even students of all ages have trouble deciding if the stuff they read is true or not (Domonoske, 2016).

Community Health 

A problem in my local community is overworking. Overworking is considered working more than 40 hours a week according to the Fair Labor Standards Act (Fisic, 2020). Overworking is a serious issue that can lead to serious problems such as death. It is usually due to the family needing more income and deciding that they will have to work more in order to get that needed money whether it be through working more jobs, longer hours, or overtime, or it may be a cultural difference since certain cultures view working differently. One example of this is Japan. Overworking is so regular that they even have a term for it, but in America, we regulate having sick days, pay raises, and 8 hour days (Spendlove, 2021). Based on what job the person may have, it might also be harder for them to request for a pay raise such as a janitor or garbage man when compared to a supervisor in a company. It may lead to a lack of sleep, injury, health issues, or lack of connection with family. This is a matter that the public should care about immensely. This affects many families in my community and it can lead to negative effectives for even family members that aren’t the ones overworking. The worker’s spouse and children may have a difficult time as well due to a lack of connection, abuse, or neglect. To prevent this from happening, there may be surveys or check-ins done at work to make sure the workers are feeling alright and they aren’t overworking. This can be helpful, but workers could easily lie about it so they can keep earning more money. People close to them may check in on them and see how they are, but that doesn’t work that well either. One thing that can be done to reduce this issue is to make it easier for families to get their necessities without having to work so much. This can be through increasing wages, lowering prices, or having more programs to help get what they need. Usually when a person overworks, it is because they want to get more money to make sure they have what they need. By doing this, we can make it so these necessities are easier to reach. Of course, this does not mean that we make people not work at all. Instead we can have a certain limit to how many hours you can work. In fact, California law already dictates that workers must not exceed 8 hours of work a day and 40 hours a week. This way there is a point where the employee isn’t able to work for too long to the point where their health is in danger, but you can still bypass this by considering the work as just paid overtime. While the numbers may be able to help alleviate this problem, we still need research on how much time should be spent on sleeping, socializing, and hobbies so workers don’t overdo it. 

Worldwide Public Health 

A problem in worldwide public health is a lack of sleep. This issue has grown over the past 20 years and is a major issue now (Chattu et al., 2018). Many people around the world suffer from sleep deprivation which result in adverse health effects. Short term issues can be a lack of coordination as well as energy, bad mood, and slower thought process while long term issues could include diabetes (Suni & Dimitriu, 2021), high blood pressure, weaker immune system, depression, and obesity. The quality of a person’s sleep is also very important, and most people probably don’t know if their sleep quality is bad or how to improve it. There are guidelines that have been set out for people but those guidelines may not fit for everyone. Not everyone is the same and that is true for sleep as well. Genetics can provide a role in how much sleep you need as well as other traits (Medic et al., 2017). Many people believe it doesn’t matter much,  that they are getting the right amount, or that they can just put it off until a later time, but that’s not true. There is a lot of research on sleep that can be very helpful for people around the world (Wein, 2018) (Ellis, 2021). This information can be spread better so that people can understand the consequences of not getting enough sleep and know what they should change to make it so that they are getting what they need. Most likely some easier solutions that can come out of this is to sleep and wake up at a consistent time, don’t stay up or wake up too late, and some tips to sleep in a better position. All of the information that would be spread would be information that has been tested and confirmed to be beneficial for people if they are followed. This would still run into the problem of the changing mindset of people around the world. Whether this be the people who believe fake news they see on the internet or hear from friends, or the children who choose to ignore what they hear since they want what is fun for them, or school and work causing the schedules of children, young adults, and adults to be tight and the easiest fix that comes to most people’s mind reducing their sleep time. In order for these problems to be resolved and people to get the sleep they need, it would require a lot of changes both in legislation as well as social standards. 

References

Chattu, V. K., Manzar, M. D., Kumary, S., Burman, D., Spence, D. W., & Pandi-Perumal, S. R. (2018, December 20). The Global Problem of Insufficient Sleep and Its Serious Public Health Implications. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6473877/. 

Domonoske, C. (2016, November 23). Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real. 

Ellis, R. R. (2021, June 12). 7 Surprising Health Benefits to Getting More Sleep. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/benefits-sleep-more. 

Escalante, A. (2020, August 3). Research Finds Social Media Users Are More Likely To Believe Fake News. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisonescalante/2020/08/03/research-finds-social-media-users-are-more-likely-to-believe-fake-news/?sh=da53aa986571. 

Fisic, I. (2020, December 15). How to prevent overworking. Clockify Blog. https://clockify.me/blog/productivity/overworking/. 

Medic, G., Wille, M., & Hemels, M. E. (2017, May 19). Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nature and science of sleep. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449130/. 

Spendlove, N. (2021, June 28). Are Japanese Overworked? Japanjunky. https://japanjunky.com/are-japanese-overworked/. 

Suni, E. (2021, June 24). Sleep Deprivation: Causes, Symptoms, & Treatment. Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-deprivation. 

Wein, H. (2018, April 4). The Benefits of Slumber. National Institutes of Health. https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/benefits-slumber.