Teen Sleep Crisis Gets Wake Up Call

As teen depression & suicides continue to mount, sleep scientists say starting school before 8 am can be especially harmful to minors. One way to help teenagers facing rising mental health issues: Start school later.

As the WSJ coverage explained about the latest research: “Teens have a biological need to go to bed and wake up later, due to hormonal changes that occur during puberty … However, U.S. public high-school start times have been inching earlier over the past 15 years, and an increasing percentage of teens are getting fewer than the minimum eight hours doctors say they need.” At least, so suggests a recent study with more than 5,000 student respondents published in the journal Sleep. Between 2007 and 2017, for instance, the share of public high schools that started before 7:30 am increased from 8.8% to 10.4%. The CDC says that between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of high schoolers who got less than 8 hours of sleep per day similarly grew from 69% to 78%. And, that trend spells mental health trouble.

“We are in a teen public health crisis and sleep is a major risk factor,” said Rutgers University researcher Jessica Hamilton. “Shorter sleep makes it harder to regulate your emotions, which are already going through intense fluctuations during the adolescent period.”

Davd Soul