Sleep Deprivation

Everybody knows that, as a nation, America is sleep deprived. The weird thing is that most of this sleep deprivation is self inflicted.

True, there is sleep deprivation that can occur for people who get insomnia or those who have new babies or those luckless individuals who get stranded for long periods of time at airports. But the majority of sleep deprivation occurs because people figure it's easier to give up sleep than other stuff.

The new medical name for this is volitional sleep deprivation. Like all medical terms, it sounds harder than it is. It means self-inflicted lack of sleep.