Teenagers should sleep in more, American scientists say so!

Many parents of middle school students complain that during the summer vacation, their children go to bed very late, stay late in the morning, and are very anxious. I am worried that my child will be damaged by staying up late at night, and I am also worried that my child will become decadent.

In fact, the lifestyle pattern of adolescent children getting up late at night is exactly in line with their needs at this specific growth stage!

In a TED speech, an American sleep research scientist conducted a long-term investigation: Middle school is a period of rapid development for teenagers, and sleeping in is what they urgently need.

The child's natural biological clock will tell him the time to wake up. If parents wake up the child before the biological clock rings, they are actually depriving the child of dreams. This is the part of sleep most closely associated with learning, memory consolidation, and emotional processing.

Sleep deprivation is very common among American teenagers. Only about 1 in 10 children get eight to ten hours of sleep a night, which is the amount of sleep recommended by sleep experts and pediatricians. If at this moment You think to yourself, "We're not bad. Our kids get eight hours of sleep." Remember, eight hours is the minimum recommended amount. You just passed. Eight hours is like getting a sixty percentile on the exam. ”

There are many factors causing this common phenomenon. The most important factor is actually related to a public *** policy, rather than hormonal social life or photo sharing software. Looking at the country, many School starts at 7:30 a.m., or even earlier.

Although several major medical organizations recommend that middle schools and high schools should not start classes earlier than 8:30 a.m. This policy has led to an increasing lack of sleep among American teenagers. This policy has also plunged teenagers and their parents into an unwinnable battle against their bodies.

Teenagers’ biological clocks will be delayed. It determines when we are most awake and when we are most sleepy, a phenomenon driven in part by the release of melatonin, a hormone in the body that induces natural sleep. People's natural sleep can overcome sleep disorders and improve sleep quality.

The body of adolescents does not release melatonin until around 11 o'clock in the evening, which is two hours later than that of adults or children. That is to say, waking up a teenager at 6 a.m. is biologically equivalent to waking up an adult at 4 a.m.

We have all had the experience that one day, it's 4 o'clock. We wake up and spend the entire day as zombies, unable to think clearly, irritable, and probably not supposed to drive.

This is what many American teenagers experience every day.

In fact, let's put it this way, many of the disgusting traits attributed to adolescence, such as moodiness, irritability, laziness, and depression, may be the result of chronic sleep deprivation.

For many teenagers struggling with chronic sleep deprivation, their first choice to make up for lost time is to consume large amounts of caffeine, drink huge Frappuccinos, or energy drinks and cocktails, so basically Teenagers across the United States are basically in a state of both fatigue and excitement.

Scholars who advocate starting school later say: Adolescence is a period of rapid brain development. Let children sleep more, especially for brain and brain development. Parts of higher-level thought processes, including reasoning, problem solving, and good judgment, are fully developed. In other words, it is this type of brain activity that controls impulsive, and often dangerous, behaviors. These are the hallmarks of adolescence that scare us as parents and teenagers.

When teenagers don’t get enough sleep, their brains, bodies, and behaviors will be affected in both the short and long term. They will not be able to concentrate. , attention will be greatly reduced, and many people will even develop behaviors similar to ADHD

The impact of adolescent sleep loss goes far beyond the classroom, and sadly, it can also lead to a spike in adolescence. of mental health issues, including substance abuse, depression and suicide.

When the Los Angeles Unified School District studied teenagers, they found that teenagers with sleep disorders were 55 percent more likely to drink alcohol in the previous month. Another study of more than 30,000 high school students found that for every hour of sleep lost, the probability of feeling sad and hopeless increased by 38%, and the probability of adolescents attempting suicide increased by 50%. eight.

If these numbers weren't enough, sleep-deprived teens are at increased risk for a host of health problems that plague the nation, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

In addition, it is very dangerous for a sleep-deprived teenager who has just obtained a driver's license to drive. Research shows that driving with less than five hours of sleep a night is equivalent to drunk driving.

People who advocate starting school later and letting children sleep more, as well as researchers in this field, have obtained a large amount of scientific research data, proving the huge benefits of delaying school time. These results are very clear of.

As a sleep scientist, I can rarely say with such certainty that in some areas where school starts later, teenagers get more sleep. Naysayers might argue that if school starts are later, it will just keep teenagers up late. In fact, their bedtime remains the same, but their wake-up time is delayed, thus getting more sleep. They're more likely to go to school, absenteeism dropped by 25 percent in one district, and they're less likely to drop out, and not surprisingly their academic performance is better, which has a real impact on closing the achievement gap, in math and Reading standardized test scores increased by two to three percentage points. This effect is equivalent to reducing the number of students in the class by one-third, or replacing a teacher with average teaching skills in the class with a teacher with high teaching skills. , teenagers’ physical and mental health improved, and even their families felt happier.

Who wouldn’t want to experience more joy and less weirdness from our children? Even their communities are safer because the rate of car accidents has dropped... It has dropped by 70% in one area. After hearing so many benefits, you may think, isn't this a simple thing?

So why isn't our society doing this? The argument against delaying school starts often goes something like this, "Why are we delaying the start of school for our teenagers? We have to work hard and prepare them to cope." real world". It's like telling a parent of a two-year-old not to let little John take a nap because he won't be ready for kindergarten.

Postponing class time still poses many co-ordination problems, not only for students and parents, but also for the entire community. Updating bus route arrangements will increase transportation costs and affect sports events. Caregiving before and after school.

When it comes to discussing school hours, the same concerns are raised over and over again in district after district across the country, and these are legitimate concerns. But these are problems that we must solve. These are not good reasons for not taking the right measures for our children, which is to stop junior high and high school starting times before 8:30 in the morning. Every school in the United States has already made this change. Districts, large and small, are finding that these fears are unfounded and that the huge benefits such changes will bring to student health outcomes and collective public safety are more than worth the cost of the changes.

If tomorrow, we happen to set the clocks back an hour, everyone will sweetly sleep an extra hour. The day became longer and more hopeful. Think of the immense power of sleep.

Think about it again, what a wonderful thing it is for our children to be able to sleep until they wake up naturally and coordinate with their own biological clocks!

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