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Linus Kennedy

English 1201

Professor Echols

October 17, 2021

Teens and Sleep

The recommended amount of sleep for most teenagers is 8-10 hours of sleep nightly.

According to one survey by the National Sleep Foundation, forty-five percent of teens got less

than 8 hours of recommended sleep (Sunl). So why are teenagers struggling to get an adequate

amount of sleep, and what are the consequences of not getting that amount? Sleep is necessary

for everyone. It helps the immune system fight diseases, gives the body a chance to relax, and

replenish itself with nutrients. Many teenagers find it hard to get the right amount of sleep for

many reasons, including the release of melatonin, activities, and screen time. Teen sleep issues

need to become more recognized, and solutions must be found, whether that means changing

school start times, parents making more strict phone rules, or limiting teens' caffeine use.

It is essential to know what happens chemically before understanding why sleep is vital

for the human body. Melatonin is a hormone that regulates the body’s circadian rhythm and

plays a role in feeling “sleepy” for humans (NIH). Once melatonin helps induce sleep, what

happens to the body physically during the sleep process? Neurotransmitters "recharge" the body

while asleep, allowing your brain to remember what happened during the day (JHU). So far, the

body releases melatonin to regulate and induce sleep and releases neurotransmitters to solidify

memories from the day. However, there must be more to sleep than that. What allows teens to
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feel well rested after a good night's sleep, how do teens become less stressed when they sleep,

and how does sleep affect the immune system? The pituitary gland, which releases growth

hormone, helps repair muscle and other body tissue while teens sleep. It also allows for growth

which is especially important in teens. Also, during sleep, the sympathetic nervous system which

helps with responses gets a chance to take a break.

Furthermore, the stress hormone levels, called cortisol, are better maintained when a

proper sleep schedule is applied. Cortisol is essential because it has a hand in making the body

feel awake in the morning and helps it develop an appetite. Finally, while asleep, the immune

system releases proteins that help your body fight infection as well as trauma and inflammation

(Queensland Health). While sleeping at night, teens’ bodies grow and repair muscle, so getting

little sleep could affect growth. Sleep also lets parts of the nervous system relax, causing teens to

feel well-rested. Lastly, it releases hormones that cause the body to feel awake and crucial

proteins for the immune system. To sum up, the importance of sleep for teens centers around

many things. Without a good amount of sleep, it can negatively affect the body mentally and

physically.

With the knowledge of why sleep is essential for the body, how much sleep are teenagers

getting? The amount of sleep recommended for teens is around eight to ten hours each night

(Sunl). A Gale database source suggests that the average amount of sleep a nineteen-year-old

gets is about 7 hours. In addition, according to national surveys from 2007-2013, 69% of teens

report that they get less than the recommended amount for their age (Sunl). A survey was

administered through Lucid (a sampling/survey company) and analyzed by The Better Sleep

Council. The survey collected responses from 1,004 teenagers ranging in age from thirteen to

nineteen. The results are in the table below.

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Reported Hours of Sleep Per Night (13-19-year-olds)

0-4 12%

5-7 67%

8-12 21%

13+ 0%

The table shows what percentage of the 1,004 kids surveyed say they get 04 hours of sleep a

night, 5-7 hours, 8-12 hours, and more than 13.

Overall, from these three sources, it is evident that most adolescents are not achieving the

amount of sleep that most medical professionals recommend for their age. If most teens get

fewer what most doctors would recommend, it could inhibit them from growing, fighting

infection, and relaxing their minds. This is concerning because if teens are not getting a good

amount of sleep, it can affect their decisions.

So far, it has been established that sleep is important for human functioning and that

adolescents are not getting the prescribed amount of it. If sleep is so crucial, though, why are

teenagers not getting the amount they should? Primarily the aforementioned hormone melatonin

gets released later in the evening in adolescents compared to adults. Teens don’t have as much of

a sleep drive as adults and children do. They wait longer to go to bed simply because they don’t

feel as tired as early. This is in part because of how their body doesn’t produce melatonin until a

full two hours later than adults do. Melatonin is also the hormone that makes people feel sleepy

(Sunl). The reason that teens release melatonin later at night is actually because of puberty.
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Puberty causes teens' sleep clocks to get delayed by one to two hours. This causes teens to sleep

later into the morning; however, they would not be able to sleep later into the morning because

of the start time of schools (Victorian Government). Adults usually release melatonin around

nine pm at night. This causes them to go to bed from nine to ten in the evening, get their

recommended seven hours of sleep, and be able to wake up around five or six in the morning.

However, in teens, melatonin does not get released until eleven pm, assuming they get the

recommended eight to ten hours of sleep, they would wake up at about eight or nine in the

morning. Given that most high schools start from seven-thirty to eight in the morning (CDC),

that does not give most adolescents the time necessary for the recommended amount of sleep

given the time of the release of melatonin.

This chart made with information from the CDC by USA TODAY shows how teens’ natural sleep

schedule and the time they have to get up for school don’t align.
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The release of melatonin is not the only thing keeping teens from getting to bed at a more

reasonable time. It must also be considered that many teens have busy schedules. Most teenagers

participate in some form of extracurricular activities. Many teens participate in extracurriculars

like band, theater, sports, clubs, community organizations, religious groups, and more. So, in

addition to the plethora of homework, some students are assigned, they have these

extracurricular activities. With all of that and having free time to relax or hang out with friends,

sleep can easily get put on the backburner.

Time Per Week Spent on Extracurricular Activities

Activity Mean Time (hours) Spent Per Week

Sports 8.99

Homework 15.78
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Clubs/Organizations 7.07

Other Activities (friends, dating, etc.) 14.26

Job/Volunteer Work 9.13

Electronics (gaming, watching TV, texting, 21.39

social media, etc.)

The table above shows the meantime reported for the activities above by the 1,004 teens

surveyed by The Better Sleep Council.

What this chart shows is that the average teen has a busy life. All of those activities could

quickly push back a teenager's bedtime. So, in addition to the later release of melatonin,

adolescents' busy schedules also prevent them from getting to bed at a time that would allow

them to get the advised 8-10 hours of sleep.

One of the biggest reasons many academically minded teens struggle to get sleep is

homework and studying. Referencing the chart above, the average time teens spend on

homework is almost sixteen hours a week. Many students justify staying up late because our

culture is so focused on excelling, and sleep is not as much of a priority (Victorian Government).

Teens are put under an immense amount of pressure in and out of school. They are competing

with their peers every day to succeed. This is because, in the culture of the U.S., students are told

to achieve at all costs. In many high achieving school districts and for many high achieving

students, teens can become overwhelmed from their difficult classes as well as all of their other

activities such as jobs, community service, sports, and other organizations. This puts many

students under stress that causes them to sacrifice their sleep in exchange for a few more hours of

studying. This must change because it is negatively affecting their mental and physical health.
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Staying up late working on homework causes many adolescents to indulge in caffeine to

keep them awake. According to a study done by the National Health Institute, 90.3% of teens

reported drinking caffeinated soft drinks recently, and almost 50% reported drinking coffee

recently. Then students stay up too late because of homework, and they have caffeine in their

bodies which will keep them from falling asleep until even later. In an article about the teen sleep

epidemic, Richter writes about how after four or five hours of homework, many teens turn to

their cellphones and the internet to distract themselves from the stress of school. With roughly

ninety-two percent of teens in the United States having a cell phone, many teens are on their

phones late at night.

Finally, the last reason to cite for teens' lack of sleep is screen time, specifically how

much teenagers are on their screens before bed. So many teens these days have multiple

electronic devices many of them go into the bedroom with them at night. 89% of teens keep

some form of a device in their bedroom at night (Sunl). So are teens just staying up late on their

phones in the bedroom? Or is there something more to it? Many people cite that screens inhibit

the ability to fall asleep, but why? The blue light that the light from screens produces tells the

body that it is daytime. They release an enzyme called SNAT that makes the production of

melatonin inhibited. This makes the teen body feel less drowsy, so teens don’t go to sleep until

later if they are on their screens (Harper). Essentially, the enzyme SNAT is involved in the

production of melatonin, and when the body is exposed to light that mimics the sun's brightness,

it does not produce melatonin. Overall, the four main inhibitors of sleep in teens are the time of

melatonin release, activities, screen time, and sleep, school start times.

It is hard to justify some suggested solutions for teen sleep deprivation without fully

understanding the consequences of lack of sleep. "Sleep plays a vital role in good health and
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well-being throughout your life. Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect

your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety" (NIH). However, what evidence

shows that the previous quote is accurate? A lack of sleep can inhibit frontal lobe development,

which is essential in controlling impulsive behavior (Sunl). In addition, general fatigue is the

MAIN cause of at least one hundred thousand car accidents every year. In addition, one year in

North Carolina, over fifty percent of fall asleep car crashes involved drivers under twenty-five

(Garey). That is just the car accidents where drowsiness is the leading cause, so it can be

assumed that fatigue could have played a part in countless other accidents. The list goes on

though, sleep-deprived teens are more likely to use drugs like caffeine and nicotine to get

through the day, drink alcohol, participate in unprotected sex, have impaired judgment, and

develop poor self-control (Garey). “Behavioral problems can have widespread effects on a

teenager’s life, harming their academic performance as well as their relationships with family

and friends” (Sunl). Hence, being sleep-deprived can have many negative consequences; some of

them, such as impaired judgment and impulsive behavior could have deadly results.

In addition to health and safety, for adolescents, sleep is vital for both development and

growth. It has been found that time asleep affects the brain's ability to preserve memories

(BIDMC). Such behavior like staying up late to study the night before a test may be

counterproductive. Also, teens who stay up late because of their other activities and homework

might find that they have a more challenging time remembering what they learned in class the

day before. Sleep deprivation can be linked to mental illness as well. Most teens already

experience how a lack of sleep affects mood, irritability, and emotional reactions. In addition to

that, though, “Prolonged sleep loss may negatively affect emotional development, increasing

risks for interpersonal conflict as well as more serious mental health problems” (Sunl).
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In the article Teens and Sleep: The Cost of Sleep Deprivation, Juliann Garey tells a story

about Ben Freedman, a seventeen-year-old junior in high school. Ben suffered from severe

clinical depression, and he attributed it to his lack of sleep and overloaded course schedule. Ben

said he was "always tired out" and reported getting around five to six hours of sleep each night,

which his dad said was an overestimate. His dad claimed that he had taken too many classes and

that Ben and his friends would frequently pull all-nighters. To recover, Ben had to take medicine,

go to therapy, and change his sleep schedule (Garey). Given these severe consequences, it should

be an obvious decision to prioritize sleep. However, with the combination of early school start,

busy schedules, and the timing of melatonin release, is that a realistic expectation for most

teenagers?

What are the solutions for teens getting a recommended amount of sleep? Should parents

limit screen use before bed, should school districts start school later, should teens manage their

time appropriately to be in bed at an earlier time. The answer to all of these questions is yes. All

of the evidence points to this conclusion. If teenagers need eight to ten hours of sleep every night

to grow, rest their brain, reduce stress, maintain physical fitness, prioritize mental health and feel

well-rested in the morning, then when do they need to go to sleep? Given that they need to be

awake by six in the morning to get to school, the answer would be from eight to ten at night. The

simple fact that teenagers have busy schedules and many stay up late studying and doing

homework on their computers makes this problematic, but pairing that with how melatonin does

not get released until eleven pm in teens makes it nearly impossible.

However, many people, including parents and superintendents, would object to having

school start times pushed back. In any case, there are many downfalls to this idea. Some of them

are: having to reorganize the entire bussing time table, changing teachers' work schedules, and
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changing the times of some sporting practices. In addition, people who oppose doing this would

be quick to point out that teens would probably stay up even later then. While this is sure to

happen, does that mean we should not allow getting the recommended amount of sleep and align

with teens' natural circadian rhythm? No, surveys have shown that pushing high school start

times back by seventy minutes can result in almost four more hours of sleep each week (Melore).

The most optimal situation would be for high schools to start between eight-thirty and nine in the

morning. That would allow students to finish doing any screen-related homework by ten pm.

Then by eleven, their body will have started to produce melatonin so they can fall asleep by

eleven-thirty naturally. Then this would allow them to get a total of eight hours of sleep if they

woke up at seven-thirty to get ready for school.

School starting later cannot be the only thing that changes. Adolescents need to manage

their time appropriately to be off their screen one to two hours before they go to bed. They also

need to manage their extracurricular activities to make sure they can be asleep, so they get at

least eight hours of sleep. Parents should regulate their children's screen time to allow for the

natural timing of the production of melatonin. So many teenagers find it hard to get the right

amount of sleep due to all the reasons discussed in this essay - the release of melatonin, teens

activities, and screen time. If schools, parents, and teens can all work together, then teens will

have a way to get the recommended amount of sleep while also staying on their natural circadian

rhythm.
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