photo credit: Grant Ruof
It’s 9 p.m., and my mom’s nagging me to go to bed, but I have so much schoolwork to do so I decided to defy her and stay up and do my homework, even though my body is beat after a long day of school and practice right after. So when I go to bed at midnight and wake up a quick six hours later, I may have gotten my homework done, but I didn’t get the proper rest I needed.
Teens need at least eight to 10 hours of sleep to properly function, according to the Sleep Foundation. Good sleep is necessary for the brain and mental health in teens. However, the majority of teens don’t tend to get this amount of sleep. In fact, fewer than two out of 10 teens get the recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep.
The circadian rhythm is the body’s internal clock that regulates sleeping, waking and hormones. For teens, the circadian rhythm is undergoing many changes that can affect their sleep cycle and hormones. It’s a natural shift called the sleep phase delay, according to UCLA health.
This change in their circadian rhythm causes them to get sleepier later than before. For example, teens may have started to get tired at 8 p.m. before the rhythm changed, but now they don’t get sleepy until 11 p.m. This change in their bodies, paired with school, after-school activities, jobs and maintaining a social life, all leads to less sleep in teens.
To try and prevent the onset of daytime sleepiness, many teens often turn to caffeine and energy drinks.Caffeine lengthens the amount of time it takes them to fall asleep, decreases sleep quality and may even lead to anxiety. Along with the large amounts of caffeine, added sugar and other additives, energy drinks often contain legal stimulants such as guarana, taurine and L-carnitine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that teens should not drink energy drinks.
Sleep-tracking may help teens mitigate the lack of sleep. Apple watches come equipped with a sleep tracking program and there’s a variety of apps offered on the App store that can track sleep. Setting a sleep goal and understanding the stages of sleep is the first step to building a better sleep routine.
While it may seem tempting to just stay up another hour, whether it be for homework or to finish a movie and then make yourself wake up the next day by consuming caffeine, proper sleep is vital for growing teens, and it falls to parents and teens to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. Teens must understand what they are putting into their bodies through energy drinks and the importance of sleep at their growing age.
We, as an editorial board, believe that sleep is vital for teens in order for them to stay healthy and properly function. We recommend teens to work with their parents to build a proper sleep schedule and minimize the amount of caffeine consumed 100 milligrams.
