Sleep Deprivation In High School Essay

Sleep deprivation is a common struggle many adolescents confront daily in their lives. It is a chronic condition with severe negative consequences to the developing teenage body and its effects may be even more dire when combined with the stress of heavy schoolwork along with extracurricular activities. Professional doctors advise and recommend growing teenagers to sleep eight hours or more, however this proves to be rather very difficult with the interference of the standard school schedule starting early in the morning. Starting school at a later time may highly reduce the negative effects of sleep deprivation and possibly improve the conditions of students. Based on recent statistics, the decreasing average hours of sleep of high school students is immensely impacting them. A sleeping survey of United States high school students conducted in 2006 by the National Sleep Foundation revealed over 87 percent receive inadequate hours of sleep less than eight to ten hours (Richter par. 4).The harmful effects of sleep deprivation are fatal when consistent as the body weakens due to five crucial body systems for normal functioning become inefficient, along with brain cells deteriorating. Since the brain is not working at its fullest potential, it would be inefficient to
Schools that have adjusted their schedule to start later than the standard 8:03 a.m schedule have students with better performance, so it would optimal to adjust the start time to 8:30 a.m minimum. By further allowing more time in the morning, both teachers and students can be more satisfied since they can have breakfast or do whatever they wish to do. It is debateful that starting school later means it ends later in the evening, however with the current schedule it causes more harm overall - thus compromise is necessary for better results instead of personal