Terra Ziporyn Snider of Severna Park, Maryland, still remembers how difficult it was for her son to wake up to his first class at 7:17 a.m. .m. when he was in high school. There were times when he turned on the shower, then returned to bed while waiting for the water to warm up, only to sleep again. One morning, he came out the door but didn't go far: He backed up the car into the garage door because he forgot to open it.
That was in 2012. And although the morning travails of her child's high
school years prompted Ziporyn Snider to co-found the national nonprofit Start School Then around that time, the school is
only now set to move to an 8:30 .m start time,
Effective this fall.
This article has been adapted in
part from Lisa L. Lewis' new book The
Sleep-Deprived Teen.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has called for a later
start time for school since 2014, recommends that middle
and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. .m. Results: While different
counties, cities, and counties have chosen to change, the majority of middle and high schools still start too early. These start times
make adolescents almost impossible, whose body clocks tend to switch to
schedules later at the onset of puberty, to get the recommended 8 to 10 hours
of sleep for their health and well-being.
That's about to change in California, when a law — the first of its kind in the country — went
into effect July 1 requiring the state's public high schools to start no
earlier than 8:30 a.m. .m., and its junior high schools no earlier than 8 .m. considered.
[Read: Town Is Building
Life Around Sleep]
Places that have pushed back the start of school have repeatedly seen
positive results. When Seattle's public school district changed the start time
in 2016 (from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.), the result was that students had an average of 34 minutes of extra sleep
per night. And in Cherry Creek, a Denver-area suburb, high school students
sleep an average of about 45 minutes longer, and those improvements last even two years after the
change.
Despite success stories like this across the U.S., national sleep
statistics for teens remain bleak. In 2007, when the CDC first began asking
about adolescent sleep in the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, only 31% of
high school students said they slept at least eight hours at night in school.
By 2019, that number had dropped to 22 percent.
That's quite worrying, since eight hours is actually the minimum amount they need.
Lack of sleep in adolescence affects grades, attendance rates, and graduation rates. It leads to a higher risk of injury for underage athletes, and more sleepy driving accidents . That's worrying,
especially given that data released by the CDC in April showed that 44 percent of high
school students said they had had "persistent feelings of sadness or
despair" in the past year and 20 percent had seriously contemplated
suicide.
[Read: Why American
Teenagers Are So Sad]
The change in circadian
rhythm
that occurs during puberty is an important consideration. But social factors
also contribute to the chronic sleep deprivation of adolescents. Teenagers are
often overwhelmed, tied up in time and asked to wake up too early to go to
school. Most teens should still sleep soundly when their alarm clock
rings in the morning to reach the recommended amount of sleep: A teenager must
wake up at 6 p.m. .m. will need to sleep every night from 8 p.m.m to 10
p.m..m., going against reality because of the teen body clock and the need for
homework, Among other factors.
Improving the situation starts with appreciating sleep. There are changes
that parents can make at home and in the teens' schedules to encourage sleep
and priorities, such as establishing family rules for using technology. For
example, charging all devices in a central location instead of in the bedroom
can help limit use at night.
But families can only do so much, with school schedules. Unlike the body
clock inside, school start times can be changed as a way to help teens
get more sleep. Since the 2014 AAP recommendation, the consensus that the start
time is better for teens has continued to grow.
The new law in California means that in the most populous state in the country, the majority of
students in public and middle schools - about 3 million of them - will now
have a healthy start time. It is also promising that schools have delayed the
start time of remote teaching during the pandemic and kept that schedule even
after returning to in-person teaching.
While the later start time is an essential step, there is still much work
to be done to help teens get the rest they need. At a broader level, we need to
address the pressure cooker environment faced by adolescents and take steps to
reduce stress. It could mean reassessing all of their commitments - and even
scaling back those commitments - to ensure enough time for sleep. In their
quest to meet all the expectations that have been placed on them, our teenagers
are changing their sleep, and it harms their well-being.
This article was adapted in part from Lisa L. Lewis' book The Sleep-Deprived Teen.
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