Young & Restless: When Sleeping Becomes a Nightmare

Feature Editors:
Luchie Abdal-Khallaq, 17
Jennie Figueroa, 15
Mariah Williams, 16
Massachusetts

by Tarqueena Heraldo

It’s 11 o’clock on a Tuesday night—are your eyes still open? You’re watching the hours going by on your clock, and you know you need to sleep before school tomorrow, but you just can’t. The next day at school you can’t seem to stay awake or concentrate, and the slightest things that never used to bother you are now getting on your nerves. If this scenario sounds familiar, you may be suffering from sleep deprivation. Read on to find out the facts!

Sleep Deprivation Among Adolescents
Devon Doherty
California

Thousands of American teens are affected by sleep deprivation, but many don’t realize the damage it’s causing them or why they can’t get any rest. Research shows that a lack of sufficient sleep is a big problem among teens, putting their emotional health, physical safety, and grades at risk. So it’s important that we understand sleep deprivation and what we can do to prevent it.

Simply put, we should be getting at least nine hours of sleep a night. But on average, teens are only getting seven hours a night⎯two hours too little! During weekends we may sleep an extra few hours to catch up on the sleep we’ve missed during the week. We may also like to stay up late on weekends and wake up later the next day. But when we do this, we set our biological clocks to go to sleep later in the night and to wake up later in the day, making it harder for us to wake up early for school during the week.

Sleep is an important part of school and learning, which is why sleep deprivation among adolescents causes difficulties in school, lack of concentration, and poor decision-making. A 1998 survey of more than 3,000 high school students revealed that those who received Cs, Ds, and Fs were getting at least 25 minutes less sleep a night than the students who received As and Bs, and were going to bed 40 minutes later.

Teenagers who are deprived of sleep also are more likely to act in a risky manner. More than 100,000 car accidents are caused by drowsiness and fatigue in the United States each year. 51% of teens say they have driven drowsy, and young people are more likely to get in accidents when they are tired. So teenage sleep deprivation can affect everyone because teenagers are not the only ones getting killed or injured in these accidents.

The good news is that schools can help sleep deprived teenagers get more sleep and receive better grades by starting classes later in the day. Many schools in the United States have already changed their start times. Since the biological clocks of teenagers are usually set to wake up late and go to sleep late, adolescents are able to concentrate better in their classes if school starts later in the morning. This solution forces teenagers to stay at school later, but because teens are naturally inclined to go to sleep later, it’s a very effective solution.

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