Sunday, March 27, 2022

The average U.S. adolescent sleeps only 6.4 hours per night

If confirmed, this is a very low number for adolescents. This is concerning!

Frequent lack of sufficient quality sleep can negatively impact health, brain function, emotions etc.!

"The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated a decades-long trend of adolescents getting less sleep. A study of undergraduates at the University of Colorado, Boulder, found that when stay-at-home orders went into effect in March 2020, students’ sleep initially increased by an average of 30 minutes a night. But as the year went on, a combination of anxiety, heavy technology use and spending a lot of time in their bedrooms led to less sleep for many teens. A survey conducted by the nonprofit Challenge Success found that in the fall of 2020, the average 12th-grader was sleeping only 6.4 hours per night.

Teen sleep is now a scarce resource. A study of middle and high schoolers in the 1990s found their average sleep time was 7.53 hours, which is less than optimal but near adequate levels. By 2006, that number had dwindled by half an hour. An analysis of 270,000 middle and high schoolers found that between 1996 and 2012 there was a significant rise in the percentage of teens who slept less than seven hours per night, with the greatest drop-off in sleep time occurring among 15-year-olds. By age 15, most kids go to bed later than their parents and share a pillow with their phones. Many parents of teenagers have no idea what time their child goes to bed or how much they actually sleep. ..."

How to Help Teens Get Enough Sleep - WSJ

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