Who hasn’t stayed in bed for an entire weekend after a night of excess, a month of intense work or a season of insomnia and problems?
This simple and ancient practice today has a new name and It’s trending on TikTok. In English it is called “bed rotting” and can be translated as “rotten bed” or “rot in the bed”because the word “rotting” applies, for example, to a fruit on the verge of decomposition.
It also has a name with more positive connotations: “therapeutic laziness”, alluding to a decision to unplug and recover delayed sleep and strength.
According to one of the most important global agencies that predict social and consumer trends, WSGN, “bed rotting” emerges as a contrast to the imposition of welfare. “Wellness” with its demanding recipes for healthy living ends up becoming a new obligation for the already saturated inhabitants of the planet. “This year we will experience a new evolution of self-care: therapeutic laziness. Inspired by the ‘anti-wellness’ movement, this trend turns the concept of ‘bed rotting’ into a refined ritual of personal care, full of tactile hedonism,” explains the agency in its report for 2025.
For the best or the worst reasons, “bed rotting” went viral and an entire universe of social media consumers joined the trend of staying in bed for at least an entire day. The results are visible on TikTok.
Public rest
If you review the posts grouped under the hashtag “bed rotting”, you will see countless messy beds, trays with dirty dishes, empty packages of cookies or chips, and wrinkled or crumpled clothes.
Closer to depression than to restorative rest, those who take up the challenge of spending the entire day in bed seem to prefer the display of misery to the display of the joys of connecting with oneself. However, the practice should serve to look inward and stop the incessant outside noise. Another fashionable name speaks of the “hustle culture”, which we get used to living between haste and effort. “Therapeutic laziness” would have to defend us from that way of life.
Bed rotting practitioners, however, do not disconnect screens or turn off cell phones. On the contrary, they entertain themselves by marathoning series or scrolling through posts on TikTok. This brings us to another important question: what things really stress us out today?
One of the most interesting books of recent times helps us understand how technological change affected our lives. It is about “The Anxious Generation” (Paidós) written by Jonathan Haidt. This study describes in a very consistent way the way in which generation Z, those born after 1995, post “millennials”, have had their entire existence affected by the unprecedented amount of stress caused by the technological leap.
“Generation Z was the first in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that distanced them from those close to them and took them to an exciting, addictive, unstable and unsuitable alternative universe for children and young people. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to dedicate (in perpetuity) a large part of their consciousness to managing what ended up being their online brand. Now it was necessary to achieve the acceptance of their peers. (…) and avoid online humiliation, which is their nightmare,” says Haidt. They spend so much time looking at what their friends and influencers share on the networks, that they do not connect with the true fuel of well-being: the talk, the affection, the word of the real people who love them.
The “bed rotting” that was born and grows on the Internet does not defend them from that stress.
Repair yourself
True “therapeutic laziness” should work like a reset. A temporary stop that recharges our batteries and allows us to start again with more energy. In this sense, spending a day or a weekend in bed can be the best solution to a time of physical or emotional stress. Fights, duels, separations or disappointments at work can find the way to begin to recover in rest and isolation.
What are specialists afraid of when the bed is chosen as a healing measure? To depression. If the only possible solution to the problems is to get under the sheets and sleep, and that option is repeated for a long time, you must pay attention and ask for professional help.
The lack of restful sleep during normal life is another reason that makes the practice of “bed rotting” attractive, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. And here screens are once again responsible for many of the difficulties in falling asleep. “These tendencies may not be inherently harmful, but it is important to remember that the primary purpose of the bed is to sleep,” said agency spokeswoman Dr. Anne Marie Morse. “Maintaining healthy sleep habits, with regular bedtimes and wake-up times, and not going to bed unless you are sleepy, will positively reinforce the idea that the bed is a place to sleep.”
There are those who differentiate “bed rotting” from “therapeutic laziness” arguing that in the first case this rest is not given for the best reasons. That is, it is due to imitative behavior, or simple reluctance, which ultimately generates guilt and remorse. On the other hand, when “therapeutic laziness” is the option there is a genuine need to get out of the circle of permanent productivity, a desire to regain strength and even a questioning of our hectic way of life.
“It has been proven that, due to the large amount of stimuli and the constant change of attention, one has the feeling of being exhausted after having expended a lot of energy,” explains artist Jenny Odell, author of “Reconquer your time. We live with the wrong clock and it is destroying us. A manifesto” (Ariel). Odell wrote his manifesto during the pandemic to point out the way in which culture (especially after the appearance of the internet) pressures us to never stop activity. “It’s ironic that we never have enough time to do something as inactive as reflecting on the nature of time itself,” he says.
To regain your own rhythm, disconnecting in body and soul can always be a good decision. If it is in privacy, without posts or social networks, not even cell phones, much better.
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