Night owls, listen up. That crankiness you’re carrying around with you during the day, your poor performance at school or at work, and that inability to think clearly may be your internal body clock trying to tell you something.
You need more sleep.
Sleep deprivation in teens is linked to depression, substance use, accidents, and academic failure.
Chronic insufficient sleep is said to be at epidemic levels in U.S. Sleep plays a significant role in the ability to think critically, drive safely, stay healthy — even maintain a strong sex drive.
For teens specifically, sleep deprivation is linked to depression, substance use, accidents, and academic failure. Poor self-regulation or an inability to alter thinking, emotions, and behaviors to meet varying social demands is thought to be a key link between inadequate sleep in teens and poor health and school-related outcomes.
But it’s not just due to a lack of sleep.
A new study led by Judith Owens, M.D., MPH, at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Robert Whitaker, M.D., MPH, at Temple University in Philadelphia found that a tendency to be a “night owl” — or an evening chronotype — is more strongly associated with poor self-regulation.
Related: The Biggest Cause of Our Kids’ Weight Gain
“The results of this study suggest it’s not how long you sleep that has the biggest impact on self-regulation, but when you sleep in relation to the body’s natural circadian rhythms and how impaired you are by sleepiness,” said Owens, director of the Sleep Center at Boston Children’s and first author on the paper, in a press release.
Researchers analyzed 2,017 online surveys completed by seventh- to 12th-graders from 19 middle and high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia. Nearly 22 percent of the students reported sleeping fewer than seven hours on school nights, despite the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendation for eight to 10 hours for 13- to 18-year-olds for optimal health and functioning.
Not surprisingly, those not getting enough sleep all reported being tired during the day. But researchers found that it was daytime sleepiness and “night owl” tendencies that predicted impaired self-regulation the most — while sleep duration did not. In other words, if you ignore the internal body clock and push beyond the boundaries of when your body says you need sleep, you’ll impair both your intellectual and emotional state.
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Owens believes her data supports later start times for middle school and high school, to match the natural shift in adolescents’ circadian pattern toward the evening chronotype. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued recommendations in 2014 calling for a school start time of 8:30 a.m. or later for middle and high schools.
The likelihood, however, that this will happen across the board any time soon appears slim — much to the dismay of groggy teens. The National Sleep Foundation outlines what it says are eight major obstacles to delaying school start times — including additional stress on families, communities, and school resources, and time for after school activities. Most teens don’t appear willing to give those activities up in exchange for some extra shut-eye.
Related: Kids’ Bedtimes Do Matter
Balancing sleep and everyday life is a challenge every American faces and eventually, through a sleep-deprived fog, figures out for themselves. Thankfully, this weekend marks the end of Daylight Savings Time. If you get to bed at a decent time, you’ll have an extra hour to sleep on it.
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