Sleep – A Teenagers Best Friend

So what is this with sleep anyway?

Given what we know at this time, sleep is necessary for brain growth and development. It is also fundamentally necessary for academic success. For example, when we sleep, we learn. Important memories from the previous days are consolidated and the capacity to learn for the next day is refreshed. And, during the teen years, with the accelerated brain growth and re-organization that occurs during those years – youth actually need more sleep than when they were children.

During the teenage years the child pattern of getting up early and going to bed early shifts to going to bed later and getting up later. And at the same time, the brain’s need for total sleep time increases – as much as an hour or more per night. When accentuated by the digital and light enhanced evening environment, staying up later and later becomes the norm for many teens. And, because the school day usually starts fairly early, students (as the research has shown us) are frequently sleep deprived, sleepy and not at their optimal learning capacity – especially in the first hour or two of classes. This pattern leads to not enough sleep during the week and this leads to sleep debt – time that needs to be repaid – you guessed it – on the weekend! This results in a pattern of about 2 hours difference between usual sleep/wake patterns between school days and weekend days for many teenagers. This is equivalent to a jet lag of 2 hours. And that happens mostly every week!

One obvious solution to this problem is starting the school day later for high school students. Indeed, some studies have reported that this results in improved academic performance and one study in Kentucky also found fewer automobile accidents during the later school start trial. However, this accomodation to the changing teen brain has not proved to be popular with education officials and across most of Canada and the USA, schools still start early and teenagers still come to class tired and not ready to learn. And guess what? In many places, exams (including those that take an enormous amount of concentration – such as mathematics) are frequently scheduled for early in the morning!

So what can be done about this? Well, changing the school day is not likely to happen, but that would be a really good idea. Just think, setting up a school protocol to meet the needs of the students – what a novel idea! For the individual student, trying to get to sleep a little earlier (even one hour earlier) would pay big dividends. And if that is just as hard as changing the school start time – at least get a good nights sleep before your exam. Staying up all night and cramming is not helpful. Getting your beauty rest is. Isn’t science grand? Did your grandmother tell you this at some time?