Do we really need to sleep 8 hours?

I am a good example of what UC Berkeley Professor Matthew Walker explains in this interview at KQED Radio: we westerns are reducing the hours that we devote to sleeping. In general we need 8 hours but we are reducing it drammatically due to several factors, one of them the use of “new” technologies. But also because someone that sleeps is not always well seen, it might even be percived as a lazy person! If sleeping is sacred when we talk about a baby, shouldn’t it also be the case for adults? This is a very interesting and day to day matter.