Why can't young people today break free from staying up late?

Because the fear embedded in their systems is too deep, and people's intrinsic motivation has been almost completely destroyed. This is the ultimate truth I have come to realize.
I’ve had this bad habit since I started college—staying up late. I didn’t really want to do it; I tried many methods, including taking medication, exercising, and self-discipline. But all these approaches had one thing in common: I could control myself for a few days at first, then I couldn’t anymore. I didn’t want to, but I just couldn’t fall asleep when I lay in bed on time, so I could only play on my phone.
I fell into an extremely stable cycle of staying up late: lying in bed, unable to sleep, staying up late, feeling guilty when I finally could sleep, and then planning to do things differently the next day, only to repeat the same vicious cycle the following morning.
I’ve also read a theory that says people don’t want to sleep because daytime doesn’t belong to them. But even when I do many fulfilling things during the day and feel a sense of achievement, I still can’t break the habit of staying up late. Staying up late has become a small cycle system within my larger life cycle, operating precisely.
It has gone beyond the so-called “bad habit” category, forming an instinct similar to the innate drive to find food as soon as a person wakes up. When I lie in bed, I instinctively play with my phone—if I don’t, it feels like suffocation, like I’ll be choked to death.
Until one day, my self-criticism caused by staying up late reached an extreme threshold— I thought I would die early, age faster, get sick. If I continued like this, my life would be over.
Suddenly, a voice arose in my mind, different from the usual self-blame and regret. It told me: If you want to stay up late, it means you really need the feeling it gives you. Abandon the critical concept that “staying up late is bad.” If you currently just need to get through this period in this way, then do it as you wish. At least, you can make these few late-night hours relaxed and easy.
So I calmly played on my phone until 4:30 a.m. When I finally felt sleepy and put down my phone, that voice told me again: You’ve played on your phone to your heart’s content, now you’re comfortable and safe, you’ll fall asleep soon. Turn off all alarms, abandon all plans for tomorrow, and rest well. If you can sleep until tomorrow night, that’s even better.
The next day, I slept until 1 p.m.
Usually, no matter how long I stay up, I wake up feeling very tired and not fully rested. Worse, I feel an even more anxious emotion—regret for wasting most of the day, blaming myself, and secretly deciding I must not stay up late today.
But that time, I woke up with a very clear mind, without the feeling of being sleep-deprived or waking up late, and I didn’t feel like the whole day was wasted.
My feelings were completely different: I enjoyed playing on my phone, slept well, and now I wanted to have a good meal to feel even better.
This experience made me realize that what really keeps people staying up late is a deliberately embedded thought system: the system first tells you that something is wrong, then causes self-criticism for the mistake, and this self-punishment leads to repeating the mistake.
And this self-blame isn’t just about staying up late; it’s fundamentally a kind of internal belief implanted from childhood—an internal conviction that leads to self-destruction.
That day, after a hearty meal, I did nothing else. I sat quietly and reflected on all the thoughts I had about staying up late.
I realized that almost everyone lives in a highly contradictory, absurd perception of time—this mistaken perception manifests as: people both fear time and expect it.
People fear that time will take away what they currently have—such as loved ones, their lives, their health, their wealth. But they also hope that time will give them certainty about all the uncertainties they worry about—accelerating the results of something, knowing the outcome with another person immediately.
This leads to very contradictory and chaotic behaviors in life. People need to deliberately put themselves into unconscious mental stimulation to “kill time,” such as playing on their phones, fantasizing, seeking entertainment. At the same time, they need to create a sense of control over time, which manifests as a persistent, burning “anxiety,” no matter what they do.
For example, feeling that all daily routines are boring, that time spent eating is boring, so they need to watch their phones; that walking is boring, so they speed up while thinking about other things; that sleeping is boring, so they stay up late to increase the experience; that working is boring, so they listen to music, or rush to eat, pour water, walk faster, or finish tasks quickly.
Loving and fearing time simultaneously—these two conflicting, forceful feelings are like pulling a box in opposite directions with equal strength, causing it to stay in place.
Or, using another metaphor, people are like prey surrounded by predators, trapped in a standstill where they cannot move forward or backward.
Animals in this state fall into despair and helplessness, lying on the ground pretending to be dead.
Humans’ “playing dead” manifests as staying up late, aimlessly scrolling on their phones, daydreaming, ruminating on past events, and so on.
All these behaviors provide a temporary sense of relief—allowing people to forget, escape, and avoid the fear of being trapped from all sides.
Then I traced back further. This belief about time comes from the “correct education” I received as a child. This education told me that studying and doing homework are the only valid uses of time, while playing games, resting, or even the necessary routines of commuting to and from school are wastes of time. It urges us to cherish time and seize every moment—these are like death sentences embedded in every child's mind, creating a highly contradictory perception of time.
Time is my savior; it can bring a sense of certainty to all my anxieties and uncertainties. But time is also my enemy—if I slack even a little, it will slip away, and I will ruin myself by wasting it.
But in reality, from start to finish, time has done nothing. Time itself doesn’t even exist; it’s just a name humans give to the apparent process of everything arising and ceasing.
What truly acts is the system—an anxiety program relentlessly implanted in the human brain from childhood, telling everyone: You are not good enough.
You are not hardworking enough, so you need to seize time to study; you are not successful enough, so you need to seize time to work; you are not good enough, so you need to properly utilize time to change yourself.
This anxiety program causes people to love and fear time simultaneously, trapping them in a long-lasting helplessness. This helplessness leads to a loss of subjective willpower, making them unable to do anything.
Staying up late is a typical manifestation of alienation—people can no longer even do what animals are naturally born to do: sleep and rest. Instead, they rely on external drives like phone lock screens, willpower, and the dogma “staying up late is bad” to force themselves. This is actually a state where subjective agency has been completely eroded.
So, it’s not that young people today like staying up late; it’s that their internal subjective motivation has been fundamentally destroyed. They can’t actively rest, and even in life and work, they are driven rather than acting voluntarily.
The result of alienation is that people not only can’t actively fall asleep and rest but also can’t actively work, learn, or create. These activities, which lack psychological motivation, are replaced by external punishments—external drives—such as the threat of losing a job if they don’t go to work, or being eliminated by competition if they don’t study.
People can still act out of fear, making decisions they believe are correct, because society’s overall operation relies on strict punishment mechanisms—using fear to motivate people.
This helplessness and lack of initiative lead to a huge loss of control in personal life, manifesting as behaviors like scrolling on phones, staying up late, and various addictions.
To address this destroyed internal motivation, the correct approach isn’t to establish a “correct” viewpoint and then force oneself through willpower, punishing oneself if it’s not achieved.
This process is exactly how the system implants viruses into people. I believe the cruelest aspect of current education is that it presumes people are born knowing nothing and that everything is wrong—treating children as naive fools.
So, the system prescribes a set of “correct” rules—when to eat, what to eat, when to study, what to learn, when to sleep, when to wake up—and, like training a dog, rewards correct behavior and punishes mistakes, under the guise of “cultivating good habits.”
But in fact, human growth shouldn’t be like this. Our world, even the movement of heaven and earth, the cycle of day and night, is so perfect. As creations of the universe, humans inherently have a natural, intricate regulatory system for when to eat, sleep, play, and create.
Those self-righteous concepts—such as “children are naturally unmotivated,” “they don’t learn or sleep on their own,” “they play all day,” “they hold onto their phones and don’t sleep”—are actually the result of wrong education, anti-human management that destroys children’s innate agency. Yet, many people use these outcomes to justify and continue to defend the necessity and correctness of the system.
Although human nature and instincts can be temporarily obscured by system attacks, they can never truly disappear. To break the habit of staying up late, one must awaken from the internalized thought process—stop criticizing and blaming oneself.
Instead, gently observe oneself—behind the behaviors of scrolling on phones, staying up late, and addiction are many psychological needs ignored by the system and caregivers. There’s no need to demand immediate perfection; just make yourself feel a little better in the moment.
For example, when you want to stay up late, play games, slack off, or daydream, don’t tell yourself it’s wrong. Instead, acknowledge that you have this psychological need, and then fully enjoy the pleasure it brings.
The genuine happiness gained from these activities can transform into inner energy. Once the heart has energy, the innate motivation within will be awakened and activated. People will gradually return to a healthy, positive cycle.
The only limitation to this approach is that the system’s ingrained belief might tell you: “You’re indulging again, you’re slipping, you’re doomed,” and that you dare to indulge without guilt. When you did this before, at least you knew it was wrong.
But it’s precisely this harsh judgment of right and wrong, this binary opposition, that leads people into this situation. The difference between being gentle with yourself and indulging is that the latter involves a strict self-criticism, while the former only cares about how you feel now and what you can do to make yourself feel better at this moment.
So, the truth is very counterintuitive: people stay up late because they know it’s wrong.
The principle behind any addictive behavior is the same—addiction is essentially the unconscious compensation after the most fundamental human agency has been destroyed, to maintain a stable state of self.
When people no longer feel they are making mistakes or criticizing themselves for errors, they live moment to moment in a state where time essentially doesn’t exist—only the present moment. Whether it’s drinking water, eating, walking, taking exams, or chasing wealth, they experience a sense of peace, completeness, and tranquility.
In this state, the true meaning of life begins—acting from the heart, actively creating.