Can We Stop Trying to Hack Sleep?

If your idea of winding down involves researching a new sleep trend at 11.47 pm, you may be missing the point.

There was a time when going to bed was refreshingly uncomplicated. You brushed your teeth, got under the duvet, closed your eyes, counted sheep, and hoped for the best. Now, apparently, we need a serious sleep strategy.

TikTok has turned bedtime into its latest wellness frontier, from sleepmaxxing and red-light masks to weighted blankets, mouth taping, melatonin gummies, and elaborate evening routines. One of the fastest-growing trends right now is the night mask (optimising your skincare routine with overnight LEDs or collagen), with TikTok searches reportedly reaching 21.2 million, up by 161%.

It sounds like a silly trend until you consider that sleep is already something many of us struggle with. A 2025 Mental Health Foundation survey found that the average UK adult gets just three nights of good-quality sleep a week, while 14% said they do not get the sleep they need to function well on any day of a typical week.

TikTok has naturally decided the solution is a cocktail. The sleepy girl mocktail: cherry juice, magnesium, and sparkling water, usually consumed before bed and presented online as something between a nightcap and a wellness intervention. The trend first surged in 2024, and it has stubbornly refused to disappear. More recently, TikTok has been busy turning almost anything edible into a potential sleep aid, from kiwi and banana-peel tea to lettuce water and ‘sleepy time’ brownies. Viral tests of seven viral sleep snacks found decidedly mixed results, with kiwis coming out on top and the Sleepy Girl Mocktail producing less convincing results.

Let’s all say this one together: not everything that goes viral works. Magnesium is a particularly good example of something rarely mentioned in TikToks for helping you get better sleep, but its one of the naturally occurring chemicals that actually works. It plays an important role in normal muscle and nerve function, and there is empirical evidence linking magnesium status and improved sleep quality. Chamomile is similarly more nuanced than TikTok would have you believe. A 2024 meta-analysis found that chamomile improves some measures of sleep, particularly reducing awakenings.

That is where we should be taking the trend. Instead of trying to hack sleep, we could make it easier for the body to actually rest. The NHS recommends that most adults aim for around seven to nine hours of sleep a night, alongside a routine and time to properly wind down. It also suggests putting screens away for around an hour before bed, which feels particularly ironic when the biggest threat to your sleep may be the app currently telling you how to sleep.

There is also a case for looking beyond the bedtime window. If you wake up exhausted, the answer isn't another sleep supplement. Hydration matters too, and research has linked even mild dehydration with increased fatigue and changes in mood and cognitive performance, while rehydration has been shown to alleviate fatigue and improve attention and short-term memory.

That is where electrolytes can have a more sensible place in the bigger picture. Electrolytes help maintain fluid balance. Some formulations also combine hydration with ingredients traditionally associated with winding down. Magnesium can support normal nervous-system and muscle function, while botanicals such as chamomile have a longer history in evening rituals. Balance's Selene, for example, combines magnesium with chamomile flower extract and other botanicals that can give your evening routine a little nutritional support.

The real problem with sleepmaxxing is not that people care too much about sleep but that we have somehow made rest another performance metric. Sometimes the most effective sleep hack is remarkably boring: eat properly, move your body, get daylight, drink enough, put your phone down, and go to bed when you're tired.

And if you happen to enjoy a sleepy girl mocktail along the way, then by all means, enjoy. But don't spend 45 minutes scrolling TikTok to find out whether you made it correctly. Find what works for you, and learn that rest does not have to be another checklist on ultimate optimisation.