Have you ever looked around class during the day and notice that people are starting to look more and more like zombies? Do you ever find yourself almost asleep in a class that you really need to be focused in? Or you have fallen asleep while doing homework due the next day? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then welcome to the life of a high school student, where students are sleep deprived and can only catch up on sleep on school breaks. Although school hours seem like they would allow students to get the appropriate amount of sleep that is not always the when you factor in the normal time high schoolers go to sleep at, how much time spent after school and on weekends doing after school activities and the amount of homework they have to do.
“High Schoolers” and “going to bed early” are rarely ever used in the same sentence. Most of the time high school students tend to go to bed much later than younger children usually do.Children usually go to bed between the hours of 7:30 p.m and ten p.m whereas high school students go to bed between 9:30 p.m. to anywhere after eleven p.m. Even though high schoolers go to be at least two hours after children do high schools start over 2 hours before elementary schools do. This leads to students waking up before they are physically and mentally ready to, resulting in them being overly tired. Studies show that students do not retain any information until after nine a.m which is already a quarter through the school day at some schools. Students that do not get at least eight hours of sleep are more prone to getting mental illnesses and getting sick. According to William Dement, PhD, MD, and founder of the Stanford Sleep Disorders clinic “I think high school is the real danger spot in terms of sleep deprivation”, High schoolers do not always choose the time they go to sleep. In most occasions when they get the rare chance to go to sleep early, they are not ready to go to sleep yet.
It is not very often that high school students go home right after school or stay at home all day after school ends. In fact 79% of high school and middle school students participate in activities both after school and on weekends. Teachers, along with parents and other adults, encourage students to participate in these clubs, sports or other organizations. Seven out of ten students say that they are not home at least 3 days a week after school. It is also recommended that young people get at least one hour of exercise a day to remain healthy but if they play a high school sport then they probably are going to get closer to two hours a day, which makes you even more tired. These activities are supposed to be fun for, they help students release stress after a long day and they enjoy doing them, but you cannot forget about all that homework you still have to do when you get home and now you have two less hours to do it so your bedtime is looking like it might get pushed back a little bit.
High schoolers spend majority of their remaining time of the day doing homework. Students spend around seven hours a day in school and on average tend to leave school with a half of school day worth of homework. On average, high school students usually receive over seventeen hours of homework a week. According to scientific studies some homework is beneficial and allows to students to apply what they learned in class that day but too much homework actually is said to ruin a student’s view of school. Also that some teachers may think that the homework they give students is the recommended amount but it takes students even longer, on top of the many other classes homework they have to complete. Homework today is often considered busy work for students but after a seven hour school day plus after school activities plus making room for family and time to distress after the long day where does the time to do the three plus hours of homework come from? There are only twenty-four hours in a day? Do high school students really need anything else to keep them busy?
If you were to ask a student at any high school how they felt, there is a very good chance the answer to that question would be “tired”. Even after getting out of school around 2 students just do not have enough hours in a day to complete everything and still get 8 hours of sleep and be perfectly healthy and happy. Not getting enough sleep is a domino effect, you might not feel tired right away but by the end of that week the lack of sleep will have caught up and a two day weekend is not enough to catch up. Students need a later school start time, less homework or more time to do it students seem to be “punished” for participating in activities by losing time.
Estefania Maldonado. North Penn Zombies: Sleep Deprivation in the Student Population. Digital image. The Knight Crier. N.p., 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://www.knightcrier.org/student-life/2013/02/27/north-penn-zombies-sleep-deprivation-in-the-student-population/>.
Most US Middle and High Schools Start the Day Way to Early. Digital image. Www.cdc.gov. N.p., 16 Aug. 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0806-school-sleep.html>.
Richter, Ruthann. "Among Teens, Sleep Deprivation an Epidemic." News Center. N.p., 08 Oct. 1970. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-an-epidemic.html>.
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"Teens and Sleep." - National Sleep Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep>.
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