It is generally more important to wake up on time than to sleep on time. In the sense that the short-term consequences are much more severe for oversleeping compared to staying up late. The risks are also more immediately apparent. It begins at an early age when children stay up to finish homework or revise for exams. They might be advised to start early and to get enough sleep but the long-term benefits are much less tangible than the risks of getting a bad grade or a reprimand for failure to turn in your work and the cascading future consequences of low academic performance.
Before the Covid-19 lockdown, travelling in the morning in a crowded train, feeling rather sleepy and wishing I could have stayed in bed for a little while longer I would see ads for mattresses and sleep aids above the heads of commuters trying to nap standing up. There is an entire industry to help people with sleep problems but the surrounding environment and culture is such that waking up on time is non-negotiable whilst staying up late is not only accepted but often glorified and viewed as a sign of dedication.
I have often wondered what sort of hours are kept at the startups that produce evidence-based apps and devices to help you sleep better. I also find it interesting that good quality sleep aids tend to be rather expensive and demand significant investment of time and effort before they work whilst effective methods to facilitate waking like coffee and alarm clocks are fast-acting, cheap and highly accessible.
One of the advantages of remote working that I noted during the lockdown was the marginal space created around waking. It made it less risky to stay in bed a little while longer. Maybe we should have a law that if a person turns up late for work or school due to sleeping in order to get their 8 hours (monitored by a very reliable device), they cannot be penalised. It would pay off in the long run as sick days would plummet and productivity would increase.