Few to no hostile mobs spawning

I've been having issues with little to no mobs spawning on the surface as well as in caves and the like. I'm playing on normal difficulty with no mods or anything. Cheats are enabled. 

Sometimes but very rarely, I'll change the difficulty a few times and suddenly a few mobs will spawn, or if I wander for a long time they start to show up. There was one case where I was very far from my home in a desert and I managed to encounter a ton of mobs, and even experienced a skeleton trap. Most of the time, though, the world is just extremely quiet. The only exception to this seems to be drowned. If I wander out into the ocean and find some ruins, I will find drowned guaranteed. It seems like the farther I travel from my house, the more mobs begin to show up. 

I've tried looking this up and some people have had similar issues it seems but their version was different than mine and the answers were unclear so I hope I'm not being too redundant. If anyone could help me out that'd be really great! Thanks.