Bridgette Sypniewski
Scorpion Shout Out print date: Waking up in the early hours of the morning for school sometimes seems like the hardest thing to do, mostly it’s because most of us are not getting enough sleep and getting enough sleep is a biological necessity. Sleep is just as important as the air you breath. Teenagers need on average nine and ¼ hours of sleep per night in order for high performance and brain development but the average amount of sleep for teens is 7 hours or less a night. Sleep deprivation throughout the teen years is a very serious problem, spending most of the day at school, teens who are sleep deprived have an impaired ability to stay alert, pay attention, solve problems, handle stress and retain information. Young
First there are many serious risks of being sleep deprived. Since so many teenagers are dealing with stress, anxiety, and lack of sleep, if they do this for too long it can have a major affect on their health. The third leading cause of death between the ages of fifteen to twenty-four is suicide. Dealing with sleep deprivation is a major risk factor for having suicidal thoughts, whether or not the teen is depressed. Sleep is food for the brain, without it, it can take a major toll on people. Studies have shown that those who go to bed late do worse in school, and experience a harder time controlling their emotions. Lack of sleep can also affect teens in the long run; causing them to have a higher risk of obesity and diabetes. Sleep deprivation is very harmful to teens, their body needs sleep to function properly, without it, it can damage certain things. Dr. Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, said “[Sleep deprivation] is extremely detrimental at all stages of life, In the teen years, when development continues the sleep deprivation effects of brain and body development are significant,” (Breus). This shows just how important sleep is for someone. Having a goods night rest helps their minds, making everything easier, and helps them develop properly.
Have you ever been really tired when you wake up for school in the morning? Sleep is very important to all teens, or it should be. Young adults should have 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep every night, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), in Sarah McKibben’s article “Wake Up Calls”. Unfortunately, two-thirds of teens are getting less than 7 hours of sleep each night, according to the NSF’s chart. This is causing a large number of schools and scientists to think that schools should start later in the morning. I fiercely disagree with this. Schools should not start later because starting later for high schools would cause too many negative consequences.
“Making teens start school in the morning is cruel” says brain doctor. Mary Carskadon at Brown University has shown that teenagers need about nine hours a night to maintain full alertness and academic performance. Getting up at 6:00 am is totoo early. We should have a later start time because we need more sleep to focus, tTeens need a certain amount of sleep, and we need to stop dozing off in class.
Students are suffering from sleep deprivation, leaving their minds and bodies incapable of functioning properly. Sleep deprivation, or suffering from a lack of sleep, is worthy of research because it has profound effects on the physical, mental, and behavioral health of adolescents. Just imagine : it’s 1:00 a.m. by the time you glance up from your kitchen table. You are exhausted from a long school day and just managed to finish your homework. However, by the time you lay down, you cannot manage to fall asleep.
Many of our nations teens currently suffer from chronic sleep deprivation, and often receive less than eight hours of sleep each night. Under these conditions, teens experience physical and mental limitations such as weakened immune systems, confusion, and constant daytime tiredness. All of this adds up and creates low and inadequate daily functioning. In addition,
School districts expect us to wake up half an hour after the crack of dawn, go to school and while groggy and sleep deprived, and still expect us to surrender our full attention in each and every one of our 6 periods. Sending sleep-deprived teenagers to school as early as 5:30 is dangerously unhealthy, unsafe, and evidently counterproductive. According to the American Academy ofPediatrics, without receiving the appropriate amount of sleep teenagers find it 60% harder to focus in class. Lack of sleep can lead to excessive fatigue, emotional distress, laziness, obesity and a lowered perception of quality of
Research shows that teens sleep cycles are naturally delayed (Should High School Start Later, 2013). About fifteen percent of high schools start at 8:30am or later and, forty percent of schools start earlier than 8:00 am (SiOWfa, 2014). The start times of schools are reducing the amount of sleep a student is receiving on school nights. Most teens start their day at 5:30-6:30 am to prepare for school, but if their natural bedtime is 11 pm or even midnight, they are getting only 6-7 hours of sleep! Remember that teens need at least 8 hours to function properly. To fix this issue schools will have to start later.
Most teenagers think that it is cool staying up late with friends, but the lack of sleep is slowly killing you with the toxins of society. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related lack of sleep to health risks such as being overweight,
Traditional school schedules affect students sleep patterns by forcing them to wake up early when their body wants to sleep, which leads to sleep deprivation (wol.iza.org). Again, sleep deprivation can lead to lots of negative mental and physical health issues. Npr.org says, “Teenagers are getting six to seven hours of sleep a night, and they need eight to ten.” Because most students do not become tired until around eleven or midnight, they are unable to get the right amount of sleep because the school start times are so early (wol.iza.org).
The national sleep epidemic that has taken the world by storm is also taking a toll in not only teen’s health but also their performance in school as well as personal safety. The sleep deprivation that teens are experiencing everyday has caused many health problems as well as academic problems. I believe starting school later will hinder this ever growing teen sleep deprivation problem we face today. Letting teens sleep later is beneficial to their learning capacity as their heightened alertness improved their classroom performance as well as better memory and many other crucial achievements. So probably starting school later, but no later than eight thirty am, will lead students to perform better in school and their health will improve drastically.
I was laying down next to the campfire in a cold night in the middle of the desert. My family was sitting next to me; and suddenly I felt something crawled on my body under my shirt (I do have a phobia of bugs). I reacted by shouting and taking my shirt off expecting a beetle or any other type of bugs. While everyone was laughing at me; at the same moment those laughs turned into screams!. It was a big black shiny scorpion with its claws opened facing me, with a narrow, segmented tail ready to sting anything that gets close to it. The scorpion didn't move, and so am I. I stood up alone looking at it surprised and confused. The question that got in my mind was why it did not sting me. By that time, my dad came in quickly with
This is just one case of the many sleep deprived teens across the country, and this is affecting all aspects in their life. Kids need a mandatory eight to ten hours of sleep each day or their school work, emotions, and relationships could be greatly affected and suffer a serious amount. Sleep is like food for the brain. It is where much important brain activity takes place. Research shows sleep deprived kids can find it challenging to get along with your friends and family and impact scores on school exams, or show effect on the court or on the field (National Sleep Foundation, “Teens and Sleep”). All the aspects that are impacted are very important to teens, and it really isn’t
Studies have shown that many students blame their sleep deprivation on the early school start times, they are not wrong. Students are supposed to receive at least 8 hours of sleep each night; however, most teens only average around seven or less hours of sleep as seen in the graph below from (wake up calls).
or later at night. On average, a teenager needs at least eight to nine hours of sleep each night, so falling asleep around 11 should result in waking up at eight am: the time schools usually starts. Waking up too early can disrupt the sleep cycle and circadian rhythm, and the loss of sleep must be made up somehow. The weekends are usually the time when a sleep debt can be made up. Teenagers sleep all day and when Sunday night comes they are not tired enough to sleep and they lose sleep.
“The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is between 7 and 7 ¼ hours. However, they need between 9 and 9 ½ hours (studies show that most teenagers need exactly 9 ¼ hours of sleep)” states https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/sleep-in-adolescents which is a website that talks about teenagers and the amount of sleep they receive each night. Waking up early every morning will take a toll on a teenager, especially, since they have school five days a week, have after school activities, and they have to work on homework for hours on end. With the early start times of high schools all around the world, how do teens get the adequate amount of sleep they need? The answer is they don’t. “The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2015 showed that 73% of U.S. high school students get fewer than 8 hours of sleep on school nights, and 43% get 6 or fewer hours” says http://www.startschoollater.net/wake-up-calls-fast-facts.html which is a website that talks about the amount of sleep teens get, and the amount they