French people's sleep in decline: towards a public health policy?

An Opinion Way survey conducted at the end of 2025 for the National Institute of Sleep and Vigilance reveals that French people sleep an average of 6 hours and 50 minutes per night, a figure that is constantly decreasing. This duration is below the official recommendations for adults, set between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per day.

From individual behavior to collective issue

Long considered a simple matter of personal responsibility, sleep is now recognized by specialists as a major determinant of public health. Scientific data highlight the impact of sleep debt on mental health, memory, and attention. For researcher Stéphanie Mazza, sleep is even an indispensable prerequisite: a healthy diet without quality sleep would have no beneficial effect on health.

Adapting school schedules to physiological needs

Research highlights the natural phase shift in adolescents, who biologically tend to go to bed and wake up later. Experiments in boarding schools have shown that shifting the start of classes by one hour significantly improves sleep time and cognitive performance, without changing bedtime. However, these results are slow to translate into educational policies, hampered by organizational and ideological obstacles.

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Source: Is France affected by an epidemic of fatigue?

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