It can even be lifesaving: One study found that later school start times are associated with a drop in teen car crashes. That would be great: Research has shown that teens’ school performance and mental and physical health improve when they’re allowed to sleep in. Now that California has enacted a law delaying school start times, it may galvanize others, like New York and New Jersey, which are considering similar legislation. Yet most US high schools and middle schools still start earlier. To give them enough of an opportunity to sleep, the American Academy of Pediatrics and CDC say schools should start at 8:30 am or later. The association of sleep and laziness has trickled into family life, with parents often pushing their teens to “rise and shine” rather than “wasting the day” in bed, Walker said.īut teens need more sleep than adults - eight to 10 hours per night - and they have a natural tendency to fall asleep later and wake up later due to a shift in circadian rhythms that starts at puberty. “There’s this sleep machismo attitude, this braggadocio, where we like to wear our insufficient sleep as a badge of honor.” “That’s a terrible stigma for us to have to fight in society,” said Matt Walker, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Why We Sleep. In many developed countries, the reigning cultural assumption is that sleeping very little means you’re hardworking, and sleeping a normal amount means you’re lazy. Then there’s the fact that sleep has an image problem. The invasion of technology into the bedroom harms us, both because the blue light from our screens tells our brains to stay awake, and because playing with our phones induces us to push off sleep (just one more scroll!).Īn apparent rise in anxiety - it’s one of the most common mental illnesses in the US - may also be a culprit here it’s one of the main drivers of insomnia. “I think governments should get involved”Įxperts blame the sleep-loss epidemic on a number of factors, including longer work hours, longer commuting distances, immoderate alcohol and coffee consumption, insufficient sunlight during the day, and excessive artificial light at night. As a widespread public health problem, the sleep loss epidemic calls for a solution that will help everyone, not just those who have the time and money to be able to access individualized treatments. So, what can be done to cure the sleep-loss epidemic? The solutions we tend to throw at it - devices, drugs - often come with serious drawbacks (more on that below). Sleep-deprived people vote less, donate less, and are less likely to sign petitions. When we’re sleepy, our ability to resist temptations decreases, so we tend to act more selfishly and less cooperatively. Research shows that losing sleep can even lead us to behave unethically. Plus, low-income people and racial minorities get less sleep than others, which makes this an equality issue as well as a health issue. It can also cause a lot of emotional suffering, from loneliness to anxiety. Sleep loss is a huge problem because it may increase our risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and even early death. According to Gallup polling data from 2013, only 11 percent of us were sleeping six hours or less per night in 1942, but that figure had risen to 42 percent by 1990. Adults aren’t doing much better: We need at least seven hours of sleep a night, but only 35 percent of Americans report sleeping between seven and nine hours on average, according to Gallup’s State of Sleep in America 2022 Report. It can be the result of insomnia, when you can’t fall asleep despite having the chance to do so, or sleep deprivation, when your schedule robs you of the opportunity.Ĭolumbia University researchers say teenagers in particular are in the midst of a “ Great Sleep Recession.” The share of American adolescents who get sufficient sleep has plummeted over the years. Sleep loss is such a common problem that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has declared it a public health epidemic. This is the first law of its kind in the US and it’s a big step in the right direction. It delays school start times, requiring public high schools to start at 8:30 am or later - half an hour later than the US average - while middle schools will start at 8 am or later. In California, a new law went into effect July 1 that will probably make a lot of teenagers happy.
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