FYI: Go to Bed!

This stuff is so simple it's scary:

Chronic Teen Sleep Deprivation and the Biology of Adolescence

A growing body of research shows that most teens suffer from chronic sleep

deprivation, due to a biological change that occurs during adolescence. It is well documented that such sleep deprivation impairs the ability to be alert, pay attention, solve problems, cope with stress and retain information. In consequence it:

.       Reduces academic results

.       Reduces athletic performance

.       Increases physical and mental health problems.

“Research shows the typical adolescent’s natural time to fall asleep may be 11 pm or later; because of this change in their internal clocks, teens may feel wide awake at bedtime, even when they are exhausted (Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998). This leads to sleep deprivation in many teens who must wake up early for school.”

School districts around the country have implemented later school start times to impressive outcomes:

.       23.4% Net decrease in teen crash rates

“Average crash rates for teen drivers in the study county in the two years after the change in school start time dropped 16.5 percent compared to the two years prior to the change, while teen crash rates for the rest of the state increased 7.8 percent over the same time period. “

       212 Point increase in SAT scores

“The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable.”

       15 minutes of sleep is worth a grade point

“Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota surveyed more than 7,000 high schoolers in Minnesota about their sleep habits and grades. Teens who received A’s averaged about fifteen more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged eleven more minutes than the C’s, and the C’s had ten more minutes than the D’s. Wahlstrom’s data was an almost perfect replication of results from an earlier study of more than 3,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brown’s Mary Carskadon. Certainly, these are averages, but the consistency of the two studies stands out. Every fifteen minutes counts.”