Any teen will tell you that it is tough getting up in time to make it to high school on time. But now, research is showing that the problem may be with the time of day that high school starts.
Teens appear to get to sleep later than younger children do. Although they go to sleep later, school still starts at the same time.
Researchers at Brown University followed 94 children and teens around for more than two years to see how their sleep habits changed as they got older. They collected data on when they went to bed and when they woke up.
Typically, they found that 9-year-olds went to sleep at 9:30 p.m. and woke up at 6:40 a.m. on school nights. By age 11, a typical kid goes to sleep at 10 a.m. and wakes up at 6:40 a.m.
Teens start going to sleep later, but are still getting up at the same time. The study found that a 15-year-old went to sleep at 10:35 p.m. and woke up at 6:20 a.m. on a school night. By age 17, the same teen went to sleep at 11:05 p.m. and woke up 6:35 a.m.
The study found that teens resist going to sleep even though they know they are tired and sleepy. Researchers noted that they longer kids resist their body's signals to sleep, the groggier they will be in the morning.
The net result of these changes means that kids are getting less sleep as they move into their teen years. Their hours of sleep continue to shrink.
The kids in the study slept considerably more on weekends despite falling asleep later and later as they got older. Eighteen-year-olds in the study slept dramatically longer on the weekend than they did on school nights, but then by that time they had graduated from high school.
Other research has also pointed to the difficulties that teens have in getting enough sleep. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that middle schools and high school not start their day any earlier than 8:30 a.m.
