Good vs Bad Evidence

Adolescent students need a lot of sleep to feel good the next day.

• But a new study confirms that adolescents need eight to 10 hours of sleep at night to feel their best the next day.

• As kids reach adolescence, they often face increasing workloads and responsibilities. But they are not yet adults.

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Most adolescents are sleep deprived when they come to school.

• Their bodies want to stay awake later at night and sleep later in the morning. School still starts early,

  though. As a result, Pelayo estimates that 80 to 90 percent of teens do not get enough sleep.

• “Adolescence is sometimes referred to as the ‘perfect storm’ of problems of sleep,” says Pelayo. On the one hand, teens need regular sleep to be mentally and physically healthy. But their internal clocks shift during this period.

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Being sleep deprived can be dangerous

• “Their sleep needs are like that of a developing

  child,” says Rafael Pelayo. He is a sleep doctor at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine in California. He was not involved in the new study.

• That missed sleep has consequences. Sleep-deprived kids are more prone to mental and physical illnesses. Sleepy drivers face a heightened risk of car accidents — the top cause of teenage death.

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Kids who are younger need more sleep than kids who are older.

• Within that eight-to-10-hour range, older kids seemed to need the least sleep. “A 17- or 18-year-old does not need as much sleep as a 14-year-old in order to function on a daily basis,” Fuligni found. But, he adds, “They still need a sizeable amount of sleep.”

• He wanted

  to understand which sleep habits help teens feel and perform their best. To find out, his team surveyed 419 students. Each was between the ages of 13 and 19. Every day for two weeks, these volunteers recorded when they fell asleep and woke up. They also rated their moods and feelings the next day, such as their happiness, anxiety and pain.

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Everyone needs a different amount of sleep.

• Even among kids the same age, everyone needed a slightly different amount of sleep to feel good. One reason could be health issues that differ among them.

• But until schools change their start times, teenagers have to help themselves. Pelayo suggests teens sleep for 10 hours each night for a week or two. This will help them figure out how much sleep they need to feel their best.

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Schools can benefit from starting later.

• Biologically, kids’ bodies shift toward a later schedule during the teenage years. “They become more like night owls and less like early risers,” says Fuligni. But despite the change in their internal body clocks, school start times and other schedules don’t change.

• One way to help teens get enough sleep is to have school start later. Some school districts have already done this. They’ve found that the later times let kids sleep more. They also have seen fewer car accidents, higher test scores and better graduation rates.