If your nights feel like the only "me time," you're not alone-and there's a name for it - Silicon Canals

"Last week, I sat on the couch in our apartment in Itaim Bibi after cleaning the kitchen, prepping Emilia's snacks, and texting my husband about a grocery list. It was past midnight. I wasn't even doing anything special. Just scrolling. I knew the alarm would go off at 7 a.m. and I'd regret it. Yet I stayed up anyway, savoring the quiet like it was contraband."

"In their words, it is the kind of delay that reflects problems with self-regulation and it is linked with getting too little sleep. I like the simplicity of their definition because it removes the drama and gets to the point. The paper is still widely cited, and it shows this isn't a social media fad. So what about the "revenge" part? The phrase surfaced in Chinese internet culture in the late 2010s, tied to frustration about long work hours and minimal leisure."

A late-night anecdote illustrates choosing to stay awake to savor quiet personal time despite anticipating morning regret. The behavior is named revenge bedtime procrastination, defined as delaying sleep to reclaim personal time when days feel overcrowded. Research described similar behavior as bedtime procrastination in 2014, framing it as a self-regulation problem tied to insufficient sleep. The simplicity of that definition removes dramatization and underscores that the pattern is well documented rather than merely a trend. The "revenge" label originated in Chinese internet culture amid frustration over long work hours and minimal leisure, and the concept resonated globally during the pandemic.

Read at Silicon Canals