As a parent to a teenager I often get frustrated that my son spends his life sleeping when there are so many more important things he should be doing - like mowing my lawn. But new research shows that teenagers actually need to get more sleep than their parents in order to perform well at school and socially.
The study, performed on a test group of 80 teenagers aged between 13 and 18 in the South of England, set out to discover just how the number of hours a teenager sleeps each night affects their performance the next day.
Results, unsurprisingly, showed that the teenagers who averaged between 8 and 10 hours sleep a night were over 70% more likely to perform at their peak the following day. Reducing the sleeping duration to 7 hours, a 12% drop, resulted in a noticeable drop in concentration levels.
When you think of the number of activities teenagers are involved in, you begin to understand just how important rest and relaxation is to them. As part of the study, the subjects’ daytime activities were recorded and it was found that in an average school day a teenager will use 2 1/2 times the amount of brain power that an average adult will. This is because teenagers are busy people. Between learning at school, playing sports, social interaction, learning to drive a car, trying to land a part-time job and getting a dream date there are a lot of things going on.
Of course, it’s easy to say that a teenager should get 9 hours sleep each night, but as with adults, life tends to get in the way and chew into important sleep time. Intense pressure to perform academically and on the sports field, heavy after-school homework loads and part-time jobs all get in the way and are doing more harm than good when it comes to a teenagers development. And more than ever this is leading to depression and anxiety in young adults before they even reach the start of their careers or begin to raise a family.
The study also showed that the teenagers who routinely sleep more than 9 hours each night have higher average marks at school than those teenagers who sleep for less than 7 hours a night. It also showed that those teenagers who slept more got ill less often, leading to the suggestion that sleep helps the immune system recharge and fight disease.
Recommendations from the study are to let teenagers sleep for as long as they need to; 9 hours being the ideal duration. Also, enforce a bed time for teenagers. This doesn’t have to be strictly adhered to, but it will help your teenager get into a routine that provides sufficient sleep. Provide teenagers with a tidy sleeping area. Many of the teenagers taking part in the study reported that they sleep with books and laptops or even food wrappers on their beds. This leads to discomfort and should be discouraged. Good practice would be to provide a study area for your teenager so that they can keep their mattress for sleeping and nothing else.