Most High School Students are Sleep Deprived

AVERAGE TIME THAT STUDENTS FALL ASLEEP ON WEEKNIGHTS

Sleep Time on Weeknights

Time (military standard) Mean = 10:51 pm Range (7:30pm -3:00am)

AVERAGE TIME THAT STUDENTS WAKE UP ON WEEKDAYS

AVERAGE TIME THAT STUDENTS WAKE UP ON WEEKENDS

SUMMARY:
• Taken together, these responses show that students do not feel rested or alert while at
School, and instead feel tired and sleepy on most school days, leading the majority of
Them to actually fall asleep at school one or more days during the week

Most High School Students Are Sleep Deprived

Only about 8 percent of high school students get enough sleep on an average school night, a large new study finds. The others are living with borderline-to-serious sleep deficits that could lead to daytime drowsiness, depression, headaches and poor performance at school.

The study, which appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, evaluated responses from 12,000 students in grades 9 through 12 who participated in the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The authors found that 10 percent of adolescents sleep only five hours and 23 percent sleep only six hours on an average school night. More females than males have sleep deficits as do more African-Americans and whites compared to Hispanics. Nearly 20 percent more 12th-grade students have sleep deficits than do those in ninth grade. The findings of this study were consistent with those reported from the National Sleep Foundation’s 2006 Sleep in America Poll, the authors say, adding that that although no formally accepted sleep guidelines exist, the foundation defines nine hours a night as optimal for adolescents, eight hours as borderline and anything under eight hours as not enough. “The natural sleep-wake pattern shifts during adolescence, making earlier bed time and wake times more difficult. The result for students with early school start-times is a chronic sleep deficit,” said lead study author Danice Eaton, Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As students’ progress through high school, demands on their time from hectic social activities, jobs, homework and family obligations increase and they sleep less to fit them in, as the study shows. Compounded with their delayed sleep-wake pattern, many students are getting up for school when their bodies tell them it is still the middle of the night. National Sleep Foundation research shows that delaying school start-times by an hour or more increases the amount of sleep adolescents get and improves their performance in school. However, to promote optimal sleep, Eaton said that adolescents should have set bedtimes before 10 p.m. on school nights and consistent wake-sleep times every night. Brandy Roane, an expert in adolescent sleep patterns at the Munroe-Meyer Institute of Genetics and Rehabilitation of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said, “Given adolescents’ downward spiraling tendency of depriving themselves of sleep during the week and playing catch-up on the weekend, more research exploring ways to intervene would be beneficial.”

Getting Enough Sleep is No Easy Task for Today's Students

Today, an overwhelming majority of high school students are not getting enough sleep. This lack of sleep is a serious problem, especially as students are doing more than ever with their time. They come to school early, spend hours listening to teachers and taking tests, then run off to practices and meetings, and come home to be faced with even more work. And the homework load these days is not light; teachers assign hours’ worth of homework each night. Our nation’s teenagers require just as much sleep as they did when they were younger, and they are simply not getting this much needed rest.

So exactly how much sleep are teens in our nation getting? Over 50% of high school students report that they sleep seven hours or less each night, and about one in five get less than six hours6. And 82% of both middle and high school students said that they woke up tired and un refreshed, and more than half had trouble concentrating in school7. These statistics are overwhelming. We are making it so much harder for kids to learn by forcing them to wake up so early. And the consequences of not getting enough sleep are severe. The short-term consequences include bad moods, a deterioration in learning ability, being wearier, being less alert, having to expend greater effort to learn, and an increase in skipped classes8. All of these are common symptoms visible in high schools across the country

High School Students Test Best with 7 Hours of Sleep at Night

A new Brigham Young University study found that 16- to 18-year-olds perform better academically when they shave about two hours off that recommendation.
"We're not talking about sleep deprivation," says study author Eric Eide. "The data simply says that seven hours is optimal at that age."
The new study by Eide and fellow BYU economics professor Mark Showalter is the first in a series of studies where they examine sleep and its impact on our health and education. Surprisingly, the current federal guidelines are based on studies where teens were simply told to keep sleeping until they felt satisfied.
"If you used that same approach for a guideline on how much people should eat, you would put them in a well-stocked pantry and just watch how much they ate until they felt satisfied," Showalter said. "Somehow that doesn't seem right."
In the new study, the BYU researchers tried to connect sleep to a measure of performance or productivity. Analyzing data from a representative sample of 1,724 primary and secondary school students across the country, they found a strong relationship between the amount of sleep youths got and how they fared on standardized tests.
But more sleep isn't always better. As they report in the Eastern Economics Journal, the right amount of sleep decreases with age: * The optimal for 10-year-olds is 9 -- 9.5 hours * The optimal for 12-year-olds is 8 -- 8.5 hours * The optimal for 16-year-olds is 7 hours
"We don't look at it just from a 'your kid might be sleeping too much' perspective," Eide said. "From the other end, if a kid is only getting 5.5 hours of sleep a night because he's overscheduled, he would perform better if he got 90 minutes more each night."
The size of the effect on test scores depends on a number of factors, but an 80-minute shift toward the optimum is comparable to the child's parents completing about one more year of schooling.
"Most of our students at BYU, especially those that took early-morning seminary classes in high school, are going to realize that 9 hours of sleep isn't what the top students do," Showalter said.

http://www.sleepinfairfax.org/docs/JEBStuartSleepSurveyResults.pdf
Adam Winsler, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology - 3F5
George Mason University

phys.org/news181935125.html
January 5, 2010 By Sylviane Duval

www.studentpulse.com › Topics › Education › sleep patterns
By ALINA SAMINSKY
2010, VOL. 2 NO. 02 | PG. 1/1

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120210110510.htm
The above story is reprinted from materials provided byBrigham Young University.

How many hours do you usually get for sleep on weekdays?

9 hours_____ 8 hours_____ 7 hours_____ 6 hours_____ 5 hours_____ more than 9 hours_____ Less than 5 hours_____ How many hours do you get for sleep on weekends? 9 hours_____ 8 hours_____ 7 hours_____ 6 hours_____ 5 hours_____ more than 9 hours_____ Less than 5 hours_____

If you stay up late, what do you think the major reason is______?

School works_____ extra-curriculum activity_____ part-time job_____ leisure time spent_____
Others_____

How do you feel during school days_____?

Well- rested_____ sleepy or tired _____ others_____ How often do you doze off during class-time_____?

Everyday____ 1-3times a week____ a few times per month____
Every few months_____ never_____

Mean=6.79 hours mode=7 hours range=1 h ~12h

* Most of the students just sleep for 6 hours or 7 hours during weekdays * Some of the students even just sleep for 5hours * There are some student sleep for 8 or 9 hours, but that account for small percentage

Analyse: Those students who sleep for 6 or 7 hours represent the largest percentage, but even 7hous of sleeping is not enough for adolescent, according to the mean shows that average amount of hours for students during school days is 6.79hours, it is definitely not enough.

Mean=8.01 hours mode=8 hours range=1h~12h

* Most of the students sleep for 7 to 9 hours at weekend * Some of the students just sleep for 6 hours * There are some students sleep about 10 hours.

Analyse: The condition of sleep for students at weekend seems good. The mean hours reach 8.01 hours, the mode hours is 8 hours.

Analyse: For the major of staying up late , most of the students report that is school works,which is make up 47percent ,which shows that the school works is a big issue that students need to conquer in order to go to bed earlier.

Analyse: For students’ body condition during school days, students feel a little sleepy make up 33%, students who feel sleepy represent 20%, although students who feel well-rested account for largest amount, but students who feel sleepy and students who feel a little sleepy totally make up 53%, which is surpass 50 %. Therefore the situation of students’ sleep is not active.

Analyse: Although the students who doze of a few times per month represent 43%, which is the largest amount, while students who doze off 1 to 3 times a week ranks at the second position which account for 30%, for those students which never doze off in class just represent 10%, leading the majority of them actually fall into sleep in class often.