Teens & Sleep

Previous Study Highlights

• One study shows teens would sleep an average of nine and one-quarter hours when given the opportunity to sleep as long as they wanted.

• Research also shows older adolescents are more sleepy during the day than their younger counterparts.

• Experiments have indicated that sleep-deprived people have slower reaction times and reflexes. Sleep deprivation also interferes with mental functioning, especially the "divergent thinking" needed for creative problem solving.

• In 1997 officials in Edina, Minnesota, decided to start classes at 8:30 instead of 7:20. That year, administrators had fewer referrals for discipline problems, and the amount of students reporting themselves ill or depressed decreased dramatically. Students' scores in the 11th and 12th grades were higher that year than ever before, though there was no marked difference in younger students' grades.

• In one study, adolescents were only permitted to sleep five hours a night for seven nights. It took a full two nights of recovery sleep for their scores on cognitive and mood tests to become normal again.

• Driving while drowsy is responsible for more than 70,000 accidents a year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

• Young drivers age 25 or under are involved in more than one-halfof fall-asleep crashes, according to the NHTSA.