Teens and Sleep Deprivation

Teens that suffer from sleep deprivation may have the tendency to lose interest in school activities, get poor grades, may not be able to concentrate, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, and may also get involved in more drowsy-driving accidents.  In a survey the National Sleep Foundation found that 87% of students were not getting the recommended sleep time of between 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night.  They believe that this lack of sleep is very detrimental to the teen’s health, safety, and academic success.

Most teens find that after they have finished their homework they need to decompress online with their friends or watch YouTube videos before they can fall asleep.

The pressures of life – getting good grades so that they can go to the best colleges, working to get the money to go to these colleges, and pressures from their peers to act a certain way keep them from getting to sleep.

Sleep-phase delay may be caused by the teen spending time on their cell phones which emits a light to tell the brain it is not time to go to sleep.  There needs to be a time limit on these cell phone interactions so that they can go to sleep.