School Start Time And Its Impact On Adolescents

In the article, “Early school starts can turn teens into Zombies’”, Stephen Ornes emphasizes how schools that start early can deprive students’ health. One study shows that early school start times can disrupt the consistency o the body’s circadian clock, which can cause health problems such as depression and obesity. Another reason for sleep deprivation is that the body goes through changes that include their sleeping process. The hormone, melatonin, is secreted later in the night, which makes the circadian cycle shift in a later time. These aspects could lead to troublesome symptoms such as lack of attention on the road. However, there are solutions to this problem. Students intake stimulants

As a result of a changing body and mind, adolescent sleep cycles have different needs than those of adults or younger children. As a matter of fact, Biologically, sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence -- meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm (“Teens”). In addition to biological change in sleep patterns, teenagers also tend to have eccentric sleep cycles. Obtaining less than healthy hours of sleep during the school week and then catching up on their sleep on the weekends. Most teenagers during the school week, do not get the suggested amount of sleep. In fact, according to a recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 80% of teenagers do not get the suggested amount of sleep of 9 hours on school nights (“School Start”). With changing bodies and minds, along with an increased amount of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, teenagers need more sleep than children of a younger age. Experts believe that moving back the start time of school for high school students will improve grades, test scores, and the overall health and personality of many students.

School start times play a very big role in a student’s overall development, especially when they aren’t getting enough sleep because of it. An important factor to consider for a student’s development is the act of sleeping; that a lack of it can cause serious problems to the students’ growing body. According to research done with Brown University’s Julie Boergers, the author of the letter “Benefits of later school start times”, the amount of sleep that adolescents need ranges from 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep. Only 17 percent of these students

The primary reason for attending school is for adolescents to get an education in hopes of getting a good job.  Attendance, test scores, and GPA’s all play an important role in a student’s success in school, and if they can all be improved by pushing the start time back, then this issue should be pushed further.  The root problem of students not performing to their full potential has to do with the inability to focus from drowsiness in class due to the lack of sleep they are getting.  To support this point, Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior, and his team, “found that students showed up for morning classes seriously sleep-deprived and that the 7:20 a.m. start time required them to be awake during hours that ran contrary to their internal clocks” (Richmond).  In other words, Carskadon believes that current high school start times go against teens’ natural sleep patterns, making them be awake at a time where their bodies aren’t ready to get up yet.  This causes concentration issues making paying attention in class harder, and kids not getting the best grades they can.  Also, sleep won’t get any

You're in bed, feeling serene, having the perfect nights' sleep of your life. You wish it could go on eternally. Suddenly ''BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!", your alarm clock goes off and you comprehend that it's time for school, sound familiar? The subject of start times of school has been a very popular topic.  As many people already know, sleep is an exceedingly significant habit. As stated in the previous newscast, "Sleep physical, emotional, and mental health." Furthermore, students struggle with this habit.

Most kids end up going to sleep after midnight every single night, not getting enough sleep is very unhealthy and could lead to some serious problems. In the opinion of Fred Danner and Barbara Phillips, they emphasize the fact that early school

Students at Hillsborough High School have to wake up at around 6:00 am to get ready for the school day. But, is it healthy? Scientists have proven that while young kids may be able to wake up earlier, adolescents’ biological clock causes them to fall asleep later and wake up later. Not only does this cause midday fatigue, but it affects a student's grades, emotional status, and can lead to drugs and alcohol. It is common knowledge that getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night is not adequate, especially for teenagers in their transition to

Significant facts exist that confirm that school start times are too early. The amount of sleep children get is a key factor to how they do in school. Energy is a huge necessity for kids and teens to concentrate during the school day. If students aren’t concentrating in class because they are sleep deprived, they are missing crucial information that they need to get good, or even average test grades. With early wakeup times, it makes it very challenging for students to get the ideal amount of sleep to do well in school. For example, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend for kids to get at least 8.5-9.5 hours of good sleep. The AAP warned that sleep deprivation can "threaten academic success,

Since it is hard for students to fall asleep early, high schools around the United States that have changed to later start times have seen improvements in students, and not just academically, but in other aspects of a teen’s life too. There are some disadvantages to changing the school start time to a later time, but the advantages outnumber the disadvantages. Due to the fact that teens are not able to fall asleep early because of melatonin and the harm that early start times have on children, makes it clear that high schools should start later in the morning.

There is a growing controversy in the nation about teenagers and school start times. There is plenty of research relating to circadian rhythms, and discussion relating to daily schedules. I think, however, that the pros out way the cons in this. Students absolutely NEED to be focused and ready to learn.

One of the main reasons that teenagers are experiencing sleep deprivation is due to "hectic schedules with after school activities and jobs, homework hours and family obligations ; and a clash between societal demands, such as early school start times, and biological changes that put most teens on a later sleep-wake clock" (National Sleep Foundation, 2015). According to studies done by the National Sleep Foundation (2015) higher test scores are a beneficiary result that comes along with students that get more sleep. The developing brains are rested and as an outcome students were concentrated and achieved higher levels of knowledge. Letting students decide whether they want to attend school at later times will allow them to not only get the required amount of sleep hours, but to be responsible for raising their

A few years back, Jilly Dos Santos, who was a sophomore at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, Missouri, was accustomed to running late to school. She stated that she had “trouble waking up in the morning and trouble getting to bed at night, which is a prime example of what early start times can do to adolescents”. In 2013, Dos Santos went to the school board with studies about adolescent sleep cycles and requested that starting at 7:20 a.m. was an inadequate idea. After weeks of intense debate, officials came to a conclusion that the start time is between 8:55 and 9:10 a.m., by doing this it has allowed students to get an extra hour of sleep in the mornings. Now, Jilly Dos Santos, who is a freshman in college, is pleased at the fact that

High school is a very stressful time in a teenager’s life. The homework is piled on, projects are assigned practically every week, and the constant pressure of the outside world’s expectations are weighing on your shoulders. If you are one of the lucky ones and have had your life planned out since birth, and you will not know of the continuous perusal that goes into deciding what, you as an individual, are going to do with the rest of your life. It is an overwhelming process. The amount of attention that is given to these thoughts that are running through students minds is insurmountable. And the lack of sleep has a negative outcome on the child’s attention in school. Middle and high school should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., says the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) in a position statement. Doctors say that starting school earlier in the morning prevents children and teenagers from getting a full night’s sleep, which can affect their health, safety and academic performance.

In the TIME article “Teens May Do Better When School Starts Later”, Amanda McMillan explains middle schools and high schools should have a start time no earlier than 8:30 a.m. in order to allow teenagers to be well rested and be high achievers in school. Macmillan supports this claim by using support that teenagers should sleep anywhere from 8-10 hours a night but many are lacking this necessity. Teenagers going through puberty have a delayed cycle of producing melatonin, which cause their sleep cycle to be delayed. Schools starting earlier than 8 a.m creates many consequence for students such as increased risk of accidents, servere absences, depression, and low academics. More schools across the nation are starting to take part in the

Many individuals, especially adolescents, do not function well early in the morning. “…many teenagers are going to school with their brains essentially in sleep mode” (Kaufman, 2001). This makes it difficult to retain information and in return use the information they have learned later on according to Robert Gerson, a physician and parent (Heinen, 1996). There is a reasonable explanation for why adolescents need the sleep they need at the times in which they need it, or do it for that matter. “Their circadian rhythms, determined by release of the hormone melatonin and other factors, were telling them to stay up later (even if their homework was finished and the day’s chores complete) and to get up later. On basic biological level, many had no more control over that circadian switch than they did over growing facial hair or breasts” (Kaufman, 2001).