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The story
Forbes JAPAN picked up on the term “sleep-cancel crowd,” a label spreading mainly among Gen Z. It follows the same pattern as the “bath-cancel crowd,” referring to cutting back on sleep time — but the article itself asked whether this is really such reckless behavior. The 5ch thread reacting to it saw comments pointing out that in the past people did the opposite, lying about sleeping more to make rivals let their guard down, alongside accounts of people who have no choice but to cut sleep because getting ready in the morning eats up so much time, and even voices from people with genuine insomnia who get no relief even from medication. The thread’s real debate became the gap between “bragging about not sleeping” and “genuinely unable to sleep.”
2026.10.16 19:15
Forbes JAPAN Web-News | Forbes JAPAN Editorial Team
Gen Z is always generating buzzwords, and lately there’s a lot of noise about the “X-cancel crowd” phenomenon. Now a new variant has shown up: the “sleep-cancel crowd” — people who, like the “bath-cancel crowd,” are essentially canceling sleep itself. It sounds like reckless behavior. But is it really?
Source: forbesjapan.com / Read the original article here
What people said
people used to lie about sleeping 7 hours just to make their exam rivals let their guard down.
And the only people you could even tell that to were the handful of people right around you anyway.
you have to cut sleep to 3-4 hours or there's just no time left.
Your skin just goes haywire and ends up eating even more time on makeup 😱
I'm in bed by 11pm and always make sure to get a full 8 hours of sleep.
I drink warm milk before bed and loosen up with about 20 minutes of stretching before turning in — after that I sleep soundly straight through to morning, pretty much every time.
I wake up in the morning free of fatigue or stress, just like a baby.
Even my health checkup came back with nothing abnormal.
Well, if you're 33, unless your lifestyle habits are seriously messed up, your checkup isn't going to show anything abnormal anyway.
If you get up at 7, make your own breakfast, eat it slowly, and still make it to work on time… do you live right next to a Kameyu or something?
Hello there, Kira-san. (this whole routine is basically the famous "healthy lifestyle" monologue of Yoshikage Kira from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
That guy who claims he only sleeps 30 minutes — he's definitely sleeping in the bath lol
"W-wait, I'm gonna go bald!"
Back when I was a student working night shifts at the post office,
I worked overtime and by the time I headed home after sunrise, my heart was pounding like crazy.
Night shifts are out of the question too — just don't do them.
Night shifts really are bad for your body —
people with heart problems actually get turned down for night-shift work because of it.
Here, take this wig
My treat
彡 ⌒ミ
(`･ω･) ｼｭｯ
(つ と彡 /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ / ﾂﾂｰ
/ 彡彡ミ /
/ /
Permanently canceled.
My average smartphone screen time is 12 hours 42 minutes. And I'm a working adult.
Once she starts skipping meals too, that means the end is near, so keep an eye on her.
Once she starts doing the hand-mirror-under-the-nose check, it won't be long.
Once you get older, not being able to sleep is nothing but stress.
There's also the thing where people brag about studying for a test until some crazy hour, making a big deal of not sleeping much.
In reality, a lot of that time gets spent tidying their desk or flipping through old porn mags.
It's basically a "look how hard I'm struggling, isn't that impressive" flex.
Everyone's done that one in every era.
Same with saying "I had a scary dream" — you get people worrying about you while you're actually totally fine.
Does that count as bragging too?
Myslee, Dayvigo, melatonin supplements — none of it works. (Myslee and Dayvigo are prescription sleep medications common in Japan)
Apparently if you make the room pitch dark, go completely silent, close your eyes and just lie there, it has the same effect as actually sleeping.
So I count that as sleep time even when I never actually lose consciousness.
It's because your meds are being capped at non-benzodiazepine drugs.
That pattern's common these days —
doctors worried about dependency have gotten reluctant to prescribe anything stronger.
If you push harder about how bad the insomnia is,
or hint that you might switch hospitals,
they might reluctantly give you a benzodiazepine.
I thought that was on the low side.
It is on the low side — this article's just wrong.
when I see some dopamine-addled brat whining that they're too busy watching short-form videos to "waste" time sleeping, I genuinely want to punch them.
Insomnia really is rough.
My mom gets sleeping pills prescribed every month too.
She told her doctor, "Even with the sleeping pills I still wake up in the middle of the night," and apparently he just said, "Well then, why not just stay awake?" (´･ω･｀)
There were stretches where it was even less.
When I kept that up into my 30s, I started acting strange, and before I knew it I'd attempted suicide.
You can push yourself when you're young, but you can't keep doing it once you get older.
Glad you didn't die.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The phrase “X-cancel crowd” traces back to the “bath-cancel crowd” that spread on social media around 2023, describing a state where people give up on basic daily activities like bathing. This Forbes JAPAN article extends that trend by introducing the newly coined term “sleep-cancel crowd.” In the thread, rather than simply criticizing young people, commenters pointed out that the opposite used to happen — people lying about sleeping plenty to lull their rivals into a false sense of security — making for an interesting observation that how people present their sleep habits has flipped over time. At the same time, people dealing with genuine insomnia shared details about the medical side of things, such as how doctors tend to only prescribe non-benzodiazepine medications, revealing a real gap in the thread between “bragging about not sleeping” and “genuinely suffering from being unable to sleep.” The original article doesn’t cite concrete supporting statistics, so it’s best read as a conversation starter rather than taken at face value.
*This article is an excerpt and summary based on the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “The Sleep-Cancel Crowd Spreading Among Gen Z — Reality Shows Over 80% Actually Do Sleep.”
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