By : Elizabeth Chen, Staff Writer
Sleep deprivation is a general term used to describe a state caused by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep, found most prominently in teenagers. Many sleep late and wake up early, sometimes not sleeping at all. This brings up an important question: Why are teens sleep deprived and what can be done to change it?
The recommended time for teenagers to go to bed is between 9 and 10 PM. The National Sleep Foundation also suggests that teenagers wake up no earlier than 7 AM to realistically get a recommended 8-10 hours of sleep, although some might only need 7 hours and others need 11 hours of sleep.
When students were asked about the time they went to bed, their answers varied from 11:30 PM to 2 AM. Other students averaged 5 to 7 hours of sleep, meaning they sleep at around 12-2 AM. Half of the teenagers fifteen and older sleep less than seven hours a night, while 85% of teens fifteen and oversleep less than the recommended 8-10 hours a night. However, ages 14-15 seem to have the greatest drop in hours of sleep per night.
Most teenagers are still doing homework or finishing extracurricular activities at 9 PM, making the recommended bedtime unrealistic. Homework, unsurprisingly, is the main factor for the lack of sleep. Another factor is simply a messed-up sleep schedule and although a ruined Circadian Rhythm can be fixed, it causes a lot of sleep deprivation. Other things, such as overall stress and restlessness, cause insomnia for many. All these make falling asleep a difficult feat. Ultimately, this causes them to have difficulties staying awake and concentrating in class.
There is also the culture of competing with others seeing who stayed up later. In the morning you can hear students talking to their friends saying things like “I stayed up until 2 AM last night” and the friend responding with surprise or adding what time they went to sleep. This can be very damaging and make students stay up later just to say they did. Although a lot of students stay up doing homework, they also stay up going through their phones, taking away hours of potential sleep.
Sleep deprivation causes kids to fall asleep in class the next day. This leads students to miss information and forces them to catch up at a later time. A cycle is eventually created: staying up late, falling asleep in class, missing information, and then catching up by staying up late, adding to the sleep deficit. If students just maintain a healthy sleep schedule, it’s much easier to maintain than trying to fix a ruined one.
Fortunately, there are ways to prevent sleep deprivation. For example, large meals, exercising two hours before bed, along with caffeine four to six hours prior is not recommended. Also, taking a nap after 3 PM can increase your energy later in the day, making it harder to fall asleep. Looking at any electronics is also not recommended, because the blue light from electronics affects melatonin, the sleep hormone.
Keeping a consistent sleep-wake schedule can be a long-term solution to decrease sleep deprivation. Slowly sleeping and waking up earlier is an easy way to change an unhealthy schedule. Rather than biting off more than you can chew in the very beginning, sleeping fifteen minutes earlier for a week can start better sleep patterns.
Since the starting time for school is later compared to normal years, some students get more sleep than previous years, but many simply take advantage of it and stay up later. They spend more time procrastinating on work, pushing back their normal homework routines. Remember that our brains can’t function properly without sleep, so make sure to get the recommended sleep hours!
