Teenagers in North America may not be getting enough sleep.  The recommended amount of sleep for a teenager is nine-and-a-quarter hours each night.  Since most teenagers don’t go to sleep until well after 11:00pm and wake for school by 6:00 or 7:00am, that means they are only getting about 7 hours of sleep a night.

Sleep Cycles

People sleep in 90 minute cycles ending in dream or REM sleep.  A person who wakes up at the end of a sleep cycle will feel more rested than someone who is aroused, say by an alarm clock, in the middle of a cycle.  During each cycle, memory is affected.  Memories are processed and transferred from short term to long term memory.  Most teenagers in the North East are not getting the need nine-and-a-half hours of sleep they need.  This means that night after night, with only 7 hours of sleep, teenagers are loosing at least one sleep cycle a night and forgetting critical information learned during the day.

Effects of sleep loss

Teenagers who haven’t had enough sleep show it in their mood and their ability to think, perform and react appropriately.  They struggle to stay awake in class and while driving.  Sleep learning doesn’t work, so if they are sleeping in the classroom, they aren’t learning!

Getting more sleep

Getting to sleep earlier is the key, but getting to bed doesn’t mean getting to sleep.  Teenagers most active times of the day are the evening hours when they should be getting sleep.  Teens who are struggling with increasing their sleep must asses their lives and make a decision to get more rest.  You can’t fix it in one night.  Just going to bed early may not help.  Our brain learns when it’s night and when it should be sleeping by the information it gets through our eyes, and that’s light.  It seems as if teenagers limit the amount of light they get at nighttime and maximize the amount of light they get in the morning. That may help to turn the clock back a little bit earlier for them and enables them to go to sleep earlier.