Setting targets

Policymakers have begun to respond, and largely through the school system rather than the mental health system.

In 2021, the Ministry of Education issued a sleep management directive setting targets of 10 hours of sleep for primary school students, 9 hours for middle school students, and 8 hours for high school students, and requiring that middle schools begin classes no earlier than 8 am and primary schools no earlier than 8:20 am.

The policy was tightened in October 2025, when the Ministry of Education tied academic stress, internet overuse, and sleep deprivation to adolescent mental health outcomes. The ministry called for a national student mental health monitoring and early-warning system, "exam-free weeks" at schools, a ban on ranking students by test scores, and a requirement that all students engage in at least two hours of daily physical activity.

The effects have begun to reach classrooms. In the spring 2026 semester, a wave of schools across Chengdu, Ningbo, Nanjing, Nantong, Huizhou, and Dongguan canceled mandatory morning reading sessions and pushed arrival times later.

But researchers and clinicians caution that school-hour adjustments, while welcome, cannot resolve a crisis whose roots lie elsewhere.

Yin Fei, deputy director of the Family Education Research Institute at Nanjing Normal University, has argued that delaying school start times without meaningfully reducing academic load risks producing a generation that arrives at school later and still goes to bed just as late.

She called for a more systemic approach, including greater investment in campus mental health services, stronger regulation of work hours for young professionals, and better screening for sleep disorders — and for the psychiatric conditions behind them — in primary care settings.

For young adults like Cheng, the pillow arrived a few weeks ago. Some nights are slightly better, he said, but most are about the same.

"I think what I really need is less stress," he said. "But that's not something you can buy."