Snooze alarm

[cactuswatcher]

How much sleep did you get in high school? A group calling itself the "National Sleep Foundation" has decided that kids from age 11 to 17 need 9 hours of sleep a night. Now I have to agreed that 11 year-olds could certainly use that much. But, I have to question whether these people are doing science or just going through the motions and announcing their pronouncements to the press as a way of making themselves look important. I don't question that there are more kids falling asleep in class now than there were back when I was in high school. With more mothers needing to work, parental control isn't what it used to be. But, you have to understand that sleep is as much about self-control as parental control. There are more kids left to their own supervision on their sleep hours, so more kids are having trouble. But is it actually a growing problem as this group claims, or one that's actually reached a plateau that won't change much unless society changes again?

It's not as if there weren't always problems with some kids not sleeping enough. I remember a few kids telling me they got four or five hours sleep a night in my high school days. Frankly it showed. Kids did fall asleep from exhaustion in high school in those days, and it got worse in college when more kids were on their own.

According to this 'first-of-a-kind' study 17 year olds-average about 7 hours a night. In the studies that weren't so one-of-a-kind back in my day, kids were averaging about 7 hours a night. (You can see the dramatic changing trends can't you?) But, I was a slug-a-bed and got about 8 hours a night, which seemed like plenty. Seriously, expecting a 17 year-old kid who is either drinking coffee or caffeinated soda all the time to get nine hours of sleep a night is... well... dreaming.

Comments

[darbyunlimited.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with you - sleep studies, on those rare times when you can actually get a look at the study descriptions themselves, are conclusions looking for an experimental design to bring them about.

So much of sleep is "common knowledge," with very little substantive data to support it. Overall, there are 2 main reasons why animals need sleep: a) to keep them from getting sleepy (yeah, I know, but that's really the best explanation - it's like enforced "down time," without a clear idea of the purpose of the down time); b) to, in bursts, take temporary memory storage from the last one-to-four days and subdivide it into permanent memory storage (that's what's happening when we're dreaming, kind of a "replay," broken and correlated with past events in odd ways. How much actual sleep a person needs to get that last thing done is highly variable, and probably the critical aspect that determines an individual's sleep needs.

I've been following this type of research for a long time, and there's very little in the way of new findings - it's just the same stuff in a sort of cycle.

[bhadrasvapna.livejournal.com]

you guve to define "need." I would say it is to function optimally and I would have to agree (what they left off is when those 9 hours should occur which is why Teen sleep is so messed up), The fact that teens are needing caffeine to function at all shows they are not getting optimal sleep.

It isn't about control so much as messing with internal clocks. Teens shouldn't wake up before noon. I don't think many schools would agree with that. I would say this, more than discipline, is responsible for the problems teens have with sleep.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Maybe we need different schools for different kids. My sister was like you are suggesting and wasn't much use to anyone before noon. I was and still am a morning person, I've always got the most done in the morning, and started dragging after lunch, and picked up again by mid to late afternoon. Now that I'm older I frequently need an early afternoon nap.

I always wonder how much of teen caffeine use is need and how much is craving/addiction. It seemed like the more people drink coffee and colas, the more they depended on them to stay alert, which as you've said, sounds like the people aren't sleeping enough to begin with.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I think the really important thing about teenagers and sleep is that many of them are off on the biorhythm, and really physically need to stay up late and sleep late--it isn't just adolescent perversity. So what do they do--they start high school extra early so the buses can go off and do another round with the younger kids--the ones who are still fine early in the morning. When my son finally got to college and could take late afternoon and night classes, his whole world changed. I think I was the same way. Not how much, but when, seemed to be the real issue.

Now on the subject of how much food adolescent boys need...I don't think there are instruments that can measure those quantities.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I think adolescent sleep patterns like everything else is a function of life style and how much responsibility the kids have. I worked all Saturday, so I couldn't stay up late on Friday and was sometimes too tired to stay up late on Saturday. When I did I was usually home watching TV. I scheduled my dates for a reasonable hour Friday evening or Sunday afternoon. I lived no where near any night life, so there wasn't any advantage to staying up late. Never got in the habit. On the otherhand, the term I taught night classes while I was preparing for exams in grad school I got up in time to have lunch for breakfast, regularly got a snack at the local burger joint a couple hours after teaching, and often stayed up and watched the late-late movie. Activity-wise it put the class I was teaching in the middle of the 'day' and worked out fine.

My mother always wanted me to eat more when I was a kid. Then I started running distance in high school, and the comments disappeared along with her food budget. ;o)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Could be a function of lifestyle, but I've often had free time in my life (summers, etc) when I didn't have any structured need to be anywhere at a set time. As an adolescent, my pattern was to read until 2 or 3 and sleep until 10 or later--now I wake up at 6 or 7, no matter when I go to sleep (but I'm ready for bed at 11, no matter when I get up, even if I get an early start for travelling).

I guess the research you wrote about was the one by Carskadon? Because she's the one who wrote about the shift in circadian rhythm as well as the total amount of sleep needed.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

I know I would have skewed the results of these kinds of studies. For good or bad, I routinely watched the Tomorrow Show when I was in high school (and at the time, the Tonight Show ran 90 minutes), was up (though not cheerfully) by 7 to get ready to walk to school. Was fifth in my class, a National Merit Commended Scholar and was admitted to the second year of females at Notre Dame. So I don't think the decreased sleep was as detrimental as it would be expected to be. Not that I think I'm the norm. On the other hand, there has to be a really good reason for me to be up on a Saturday morning, and more likely that no one would see me before noon.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I would have skewed the results of these kinds of studies

Yeah, that's the problem with this. They make the assumption that less than 9 hours of sleep is bad, but there is nothing to back it up. No data of any kind on it. Just hand-wringing that so many kids don't fit their norm.