In September of 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement about adolescents and the amount of sleep they get. They found evidence that “strongly implicates earlier school start times (ie, before 8:30 AM) as a key contributor to insufficient sleep” in teens. This issue of not enough sleep is what they call “an important public health issue that significantly affects the health and safety of our nation’s middle and high school students.”
Sufficient sleep for a teen is 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep. So what is causing the loss of sleep? Well, puberty does. The biology of our bodies change at puberty and we experience a sleep-wake “phase-delay”, which is a fancy way to say we stay up later and sleep in longer. This shift makes a teens normal sleep habits difficult to keep. Going to bed earlier to wake up earlier is just harder for teens. And since we shouldn’t get rid of puberty, the next best thing is to change the times that schools start.
Some of the impacts of chronic sleep loss are: increased obesity risk, higher rates of caffeine consumption, nonmedical use of stimulant medications, increased risk of depression, poor impulse control, and impairments in attention and memory. And the list goes on and on.
AAP cites research showing that a later start for middle and high schools had positive outcomes: more sleep time, less daytime sleepiness, less tardiness, better academic performance, and better attention. But just focusing on school start time isn’t going to create this magic. Other factors to consider are the time spent on homework, extracurricular activities, after-school employment, and socializing. A healthy balance will make a healthy kid.
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