Most High School Students Are Sleep Deprived
Release Date: January 5, 2010 |
Only about 8 percent of high school students get enough sleep on an average school night, a large new study finds. The others are living with borderline-to-serious sleep deficits that could lead to daytime drowsiness, depression, headaches and poor performance at school.
The study, which appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, evaluated responses from 12,000 students in grades 9 through 12 who participated in the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
The authors found that 10 percent of adolescents sleep only five hours and 23 percent sleep only six hours on an average school night. More females than males have sleep deficits as do more African-Americans and whites compared to Hispanics. Nearly 20 percent more 12th-grade students have sleep deficits than do those in ninth grade.
The findings of this study were consistent with those reported from the National Sleep Foundation’s 2006 Sleep in America Poll, the authors say, adding that that although no formally accepted sleep guidelines exist, the foundation defines nine hours a night as optimal for adolescents, eight hours as borderline and anything under eight hours as not enough.
“The natural sleep-wake pattern shifts during adolescence, making earlier bed time and wake times more difficult. The result for students with early school start-times is a chronic sleep deficit,” said lead study author Danice Eaton, Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As students progress through high school, demands on their time from hectic social activities, jobs, homework and family obligations increase and they sleep less to fit them in, as the study shows. Compounded with their delayed sleep-wake pattern, many students are getting up for school when their bodies tell them it is still the middle of the night.
National Sleep Foundation research shows that delaying school start-times by an hour or more increases the amount of sleep adolescents get and improves their performance in school. However, to promote optimal sleep, Eaton said that adolescents should have set bedtimes before 10 p.m. on school nights and consistent wake-sleep times every night.
Brandy Roane, an expert in adolescent sleep patterns at the Munroe-Meyer Institute of Genetics and Rehabilitation of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said, “Given adolescents’ downward spiraling tendency of depriving themselves of sleep during the week and playing catch-up on the weekend, more research exploring ways to intervene would be beneficial.”
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Reach the Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health, at hbns-editor@cfah.org or (202) 387-2829.
Journal of Adolescent Health: Contact Tor Berg at (415) 502-1373 or tor.berg@ucsf.edu or visit www.jahonline.org
Eaton DK, et al. Prevalence of insufficient, borderline, and optimal hours of sleep
among high school students – United States, 2007. J Adolesc Health online, 2010.
Tags for this article:
Sleep
Children and Young People's Health
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| MusinAround says September 30, 2010 at 12:55 PM I'm a sleep-deprived teenager and I find that I DO get depressed a lot. Since last year, the amount of sleep I get each night has also decreased to accomodate the workload I get each night. I play catch-up on the weekends and I take a 3-4 hour nap after I get home each day to make up for the lack of sleep I get each night. I usually get to sleep by 2 am and wake up at 7am on the average weekday, and on the weekends I stay up till 4 and maybe get up at 12-1 pm. |
| lesli vanessa hipolito valdez says May 15, 2012 at 10:40 AM I'm a sleep-deprived teenager and i find that these thingsa are really helping me. so thanks for everithing :) |
| Whangarei Paora says September 5, 2012 at 6:23 AM I sleep mostly at 2 a.m in the morning, and the reason that is, because, I'm always up late doing a ton load of homework. |
| Mark anonymous says October 15, 2012 at 2:43 AM Haha. Made me laugh. I'm 15 and a sophomore. My school starts late (thank god) so i usually sleep from 3 am to 7:30 pm. I get A's across the board unless the class just frickin bores me. Its almost 4 am now and i have school 2morrow. See you in 3.5 hours... |
| timmy says February 12, 2013 at 3:40 PM You just now figured that out. |
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| Wassup says says May 10, 2013 at 12:15 AM I normally go to bed at 0000, get up at 0700, but sometimes bed at 0000 and gym at 0415. That's hardest because you miss the deepest part of the night's sleep and not the part where you are lying in bed awake anyways. It is 2200 and I will start my homework soon. I swear. ha... |
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