Sleep and Teenagers
February 12, 2010 
17 Comments
For most of us, waking up is unpleasant. The first thing we hear in the morning is a blaring alarm, or the radio turning on, or in many cases, someone walking in and yelling at us that it’s time to get up. With this type of emergence into wakefulness, it is no surprise that most of us do not consider ourselves “morning people.” It is, after all, when we are seeking to transition out of what is perhaps the most important, and for many of us, our favorite part of the day. And for teens, the morning is an especially difficult time.
Doctors recommend adolescents get around 9 hours of sleep per night, but most are getting less than 7 hours a night, reports the National Sleep Foundation. This causes a number of problems for teenager. It leaves them sleepier during the day, and causes them to adopt abnormal sleep schedules on the weekends to try to make up for the lost sleep. These fluctuations in sleep patterns make them more tired.
A National Sleep Foundation poll conducted in 2006 found that fewer than 20% of adolescents got the recommended nine hours of sleep on school nights
The problem is not that teens are unwilling to sleep, as their obsession with sleeping on the weekend indicates, but that their schedule was designed for an adult instead. While the mind of an adult is typically ready for sleep at 10 PM, a teenager does not begin to produce melatonin, the hormone responsible for tiredness, until 11 PM, according to a study published in the journal Sleep Research. This means that simply setting an earlier bedtime for a teenager will in many cases not help them get more sleep. This same study also said that many teenagers were still in REM sleep, rapid eye movement or deep, dreaming sleep, between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, when most teenagers are required to wake up for school. The brains of these students, then, will have great difficulty functioning during their first class, and the sleep debt will hinder them throughout the day.
Researchers recommend moving school opening times to 8:30 AM, but transportation costs, after-school activities, and parental concerns, are cited as reasons to prevent these changes, despite rises in test scores in schools that opened later in Connecticut, Kentucky, and Minnesota.
Other issues would also be addressed by improved sleep. Childhood obesity has been linked to a poor sleep regimen, most likely due to both social factors, tired and cranky children are likely to eat more food, and biological factors, the hormone leptin that controls fat digestion can be altered by sleep deprivation. Likewise, sleep is known to improve immune system functioning. People who slept less than seven hours a night were three times as likely to contract a virus, one study found. Sleep helps the body focus on producing white blood cells, anthropologists believe. Finally, the CDC reports that “drowsy driving” accounts for thousands of teen car accidents every year, making a lack of sleep extremely dangerous for the more than fifty percent of teens who admitted to “drowsy driving” in the same Sleep Foundation study cited earlier.
We are only beginning to understand the functions of sleep. But what we do know now is that it is vital to our health in more ways than one, that teenagers are not getting enough of it, and that their sleep needs are different from those who design their schedules. And despite the preponderance of evidence linking poor sleep habits to obesity, decreased performance in school, depression, and and a variety of other issues, no one seems ready to do anything to fix the problem.
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i really agree with this article.Sound sleep is needed in today’s life for teenagers to keep them away from mental stress. Nowadays due to stiff competition in education children have to study late night which effect their health.Moreover less sleep may have digestion problems also.So it is better to go for a sleep early and get up early in morning. 9 hours sleep as rightly mentioned in the article is must for teenagers to avoid further problems.
I really accept your article. Myself also very suffered by lack of sleep. The young ones must read this article. They are go to bed very late, and wake up also very late. So that day going to be very lazy. Early to bed, and early to wake up. Very nice and useful article. Thanks.
If my son is any indication, then everything stated here is correct. This article could have been written about him. Every time I tell him he needs to be in bed (around 10:00 p.m.) he says he’s not tired and he won’t be able to sleep. He says if I make him go to bed he just lays there awake. When given free reign, he will fall asleep around 11:00 or 12:00 p.m. and wake up around 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. He feels better, acts better, and interacts better. It’s no wonder teenagers have “bad attitudes.” It would seem that some of the attitudes most people attribute to hormones can be explained by an inadequate sleep schedule. It’s difficult to understand that with this knowledge more educators aren’t working toward a solution so that teens can function learn better.
I will use this info to help convince my teen (and husband) that regular sleep patterns are an important part of everyday functining. I didn’t know that soo many things were affected by lack of sleep!
There is absolutely no doubt that sleep is really important for ones physical and mental health. Surely teenagers are loosing out on their sleep for more than one reason and that includes late nights, watching TV, spending time on the computer playing games or surfing the net, studying (a lot of students prefer to study late at night than in the day). I’m not a teenager anymore but I want to add that until I was I actually slept quite well and it all sort of started after I started working full-time in shifts taking a 360 degree toll on my health. From the usual dark circles to dry eyes, to acidity and chest pains I felt it all mainly due to lack of sleep and working late and not keeping a well balanced life.
Sleep not just helps us to regain our eneregy but has multiple benefits like improving blood supply in the body, improving skin and hair, repairing the system internally and externally.
I recommend that if you end up being up late in the night, make sure to have a bottle of water around you and sip often to keep your self hydrated. You are less likely to be tired.
Good night
I found the article extremely interesting so this will be mainly a praising comment.
First of all, I loved the introduction to the theme. It is more than an introduction, it is an explaination why most of us aren’t “morning people”, including teens.
Then, the scientific references were well done because people could easily understand the act of sleeping and relate it to the context.
Also, you show the main consequences, and you actually show the answer to it too when you say “Researchers recommend moving school opening times to 8:30 AM”. Without getting involved or taking sides, you give the tips.
But the most important part in the article is when you say the other consequences. I mean, it’s obvious: if you don’t sleep, you get sleepy. But what other things can not sleeping provoque? This part I think you should have extended a little more, because people are still not aware of this.
To finish, I enjoyed the conclusion. It ends the article perfectly.
The overall is amazingly good. You should be proud.
Even I completely agree with this article as it is very important for all teenagers to get a sound sleep of at least 7-8 hours every day to keep themselves fit and healthy not only physically but also mentally. It is during our sleep time, that the body gets rejuvenated and gets some rest. So, if there is a lack of proper sleep, it will result in stress, memory loss, reduced immunity level, tiredness, lack of concentration etc. Therefore, a good sleep is very important especially for the teenagers, who spend most of their day in school either studying or participating in other activities like sports etc.
I agree completely with the article. While I was teaching, I noticed a marked difference between the students who had my class in the morning and those in the afternoon. Typically the afternoon classes were more lively and willing to engage in the classroom activities. At the time, we chalked that up to a more rambunctious group, but I do not think that was entirely the issue. Later the semester we had the same group for an enrichment class that occurred earlier in the day. They were not nearly as difficult to manage. I have seen the same thing starting with my own child. He is nearing the teenage years and he is already showing similar behaviors. He wants to stay up later, and on the weekends he sleeps late. When he was younger he could go to sleep by 9 every night. He was usually up by 7:30 am the next day. The grouchy attitude and general lack of energy is a norm for him in the morning now. It is particularly difficult for him because he catches the bus at 6:45 am. I am hopeful that one day there will be some modification to the schedule the schools in my area use.
The point about teens finding sleep very late at night is well taken. This should go a long way in preparing a proper schedule for young people.
I heard that Madison High School has instituted a new schedule that starts later in the morning by I believe 50 (or 15 I forget) minutes. As a result, students are getting more sleep and they’ve seen test scores improve.