Adolescent Sleep Disorders—could School Schedules Be To Blame?

More and more, adolescents have been diagnosed with adolescent sleep disorders. Most commonly, adolescent sleep disorders prevent teenagers from receiving the proper amount of sleep. Most experts agree that teenagers need about nine hours of sleep; however, the average teen gets about six and a half hours of sleep on a school night, while some get even less.

Adolescent sleep disorders are thought to be caused by irregular sleeping patterns. Most teens are forced to wake up early to attend school, which conflicts with their natural tendencies to stay up later at night and wake up later. To compensate for this, teens try to catch up on their sleep during the weekends, oftentimes sleeping well into the afternoon. But experts agree that teens need to establish regular sleep patterns in order to avoid adolescent sleep disorders.

Sleep Deprivation Effects

Teens with adolescent sleep disorders are often deprived of sleep, which has many negative effects. Sleep deprivation could hinder both memory and creativity, which in turn could cause issues with learning abilities. Lack of sleep can result in mood swings, stress, and difficulty controlling emotions, depression, and a weakened immune system. A weakened immune system could cause many other long term problems as well.

What Can Be Done to Fix the Problem?

The solution to reducing adolescent sleep disorders is by no means simple. Because studies have shown that teenagers have a natural inclination to sleep late and go to bed late, the best solution would be to change the schedule of when students attend school. Currently, in many school systems throughout the world, high school students attend school, beginning as early as 7:25! This means that many high-schoolers are required to make it to the bus stop by 6:45 or earlier. Middle schoolers begin school next, with elementary schoolers beginning school the latest. But many people have expressed their support for reversing this schedule, allowing the high school students to begin school last.

There are problems with this solution, however. It would cost a lot of money to change the schedule that the busses run on. Additionally, many students have pointed out that a potential schedule change would interfere with extra curricular activities. Many students don’t leave the school until 4:00 already—with the new system, many high school students that are involved in clubs and sports would not arrive home until 7:00 or later.

Simon Peters