Yeah, they are different. But not completely different. It is hard to be understanding to a social norm, when that social norms are responsible for a life full of mornings when I want to sleep, but instead I drag myself out of the bed and kick myself to keep awake.
I mean, it is happened already, there is no way to undid damage done. It is happening now, and forgotmypw17 shows us the expected reaction to a proposition to find another way to make some people to conform with social norms even when their physiology doesn't want it. I'm not saying that his attitude is constructive, rational, or the best possible, or even acceptable, but you'll get a lot of it, if you keep saying to people "we'll find a way to make you normal".
(It is mine reaction also: who do you think you are, to believe that you are more normal than me?! To write social norms ignoring my needs? To force me to conform to that stupid social norms? To make me think that I'm lazy because I cannot wake up in the morning, I have no will because I'm sleepy till 11:00, or in some other ways inferior? It is hard to not speak my mind in that style, because I hate those norms from the school. Now I'm 40, and my hate stewed for decades.).
> Society didn’t make the day 24 hours long.
It did. Maybe 200 years ago 24 hours long day was not a society's fault, but now it is. We have electricity now and electrical lights. One could be perfectly well and functioning even at night. Just some people think that if their sleep cycle aligned with Earth's rotations, it makes them special and superior.
If an overwhelmingly large proportion of a population exhibits tendency A and a smaller group tendency B, we describe the first group as normal. It’s not a value judgement so much as it is a useful description using a word from the dictionary.
It happens to correspond to the statistical definition, and certainly that is the mathematical meaning, but in every domain outside of pure mathematics, it always implies a value judgement.
Moreover in this particular case it is not just about statistical averages, it is about social norms which were built around statistical averages. So a normality in this case it is also the rights to have social norms to be built with a respect to my needs.
Categorising a group of people as not normal has negative effects.
People are downplaying the extent to which habits and preferences have an impact. Staying in bed late will shift forward your circadian rhythm. Blue-light emitting electronics will suppress melatonin at night and raise cortisol.
Before the industrial revolution few were staying up all night regularly unless they were on night shift. Bright light and multimedia available at night changed.
https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shi...
This statement is not supported by your link:
> 25 adults...with late sleep schedules and subclinical features of delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD).
The "subclinical features" part is important! I am not trying to step into the "habits versus nature" part for healthy night owls / morning larks, but actual clinical DPSD is a significant medical problem that is very clearly not related to habits or sleep hygiene. Which means comments like this:
> Before the industrial revolution few were staying up all night regularly unless they were on night shift. Bright light and multimedia available at night changed.
are truly irrelevant here, and inappropriately judgmental of people with a real illness.
There are still valuable things that can be learned from that kind of research, but the popular coverage really missed the mark by directly extrapolating from research in mice to human circadian rhythms.
If they miss too much high school they can be arrested for truancy, they can be verbally and physically assaulted by parents or peers, find themselves completely ostracized from society and unable to find professional work that suits their skill level, etc. They face significant discrimination, harassment, and exclusion. If that doesn't kill them, they might just do the job themselves.
sleeping same hours every day is not a given.
Ok, well, delayed phase sleep disorder is in fact a disorder that can lead to serious health problems, even when people are allowed to self-select their sleep schedules. One proposal for the mechanism is that the circadian cycle is longer than 24 hours, which is in fact a medical problem. Society didn’t make the day 24 hours long. People without DPSD can generally fall asleep earlier than normal if they are sleep-deprived, but not people with DPSD.
DPSD is very different than normal “night owl” syndrome, and is not an issue of society refusing to acknowledge different schedules. Are you sure you even have DPSD?
> abusive and disrespectful and needlessly oppressive, no different from treating women or gay as inferior.
Please please please please stop trivializing misogyny and homophobia with these ridiculous and narcissistic comparisons. “No different” - reeeeeaaaalllllly? Things are more difficult socially and professionally for people with DPSD. But they don’t get killed for it! You don’t have people musing about how DPSD are duplicitous wenches who are running our culture.