Rest and Its Challenges in College Life: Results from 100 Survey Items

Taking breaks from work, mentally detaching afterhours, and engaging in wakeful rest periods are important to wellbeing (Kuykendall et a., 2015) and work performance (Sonnentag, 2012), but many undergraduates struggle with this (Shaw et al., 2025). Researchers have increasingly begun to study how undergraduate students spend their time (e.g., Kitchen et al., 2024; Wladis et al., 2018), but there are many attitudes and experiences that have yet to be more thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this study was to broadly survey undergraduate students about a variety of attitudes and experiences with rest to identify possible latent constructs and new directions for subsequent research. Major findings include 1) that students report high value of rest for their productivity and wellbeing, but struggle to engage in effacious rest periods, 2) many students reported turning to mindless distractions like social media during freetime, but this does not leave the majority feeling restored or energized, and 3) students rarely reflect on or optimize their rest despite its importance, highlighting a significant gap in support for helping students recover from stress.