Considering you have been having this problem since before you updated to Sonoma (I presume), its unlikely

It might just be since its running more modern firmware causing this, intel Macs aren’t ideal in such cases

Another student here. I have the base model M1 Air and I have had 0 issues with the 8gb. I use Teams, Word, Safari, Discord, PyCharm (for my python projects), and even the UTM virtual machine for my linux stuff. I will usually have a good few virtual desktops open aswell so I can navigate to things quickly.

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Of course it always useful to have 16gb nowadays, but I would only recommend it if you have the extra money - good for future proofing your machine.