Adolescents and Sleep
Teens are notorious for staying up late and complaining of fatigue. An article in The Washington Post (January 18, 2022) by Perry notes that, while teens should get 8-10 hours of sleep, fewer than one-fourth of high school student get 8 hours of sleep. She cites one study finding that teens who got roughly 9 hours of sleep had the lowest levels of moodiness, anxiety, depression, and feelings of worthlessness. Another study of college students found that those who got the most regular weeknight sleep had the greatest increases in happiness and well-being over the course of the semester. Additional research finds associations between poor sleep and suicidal ideation.
A study by Yip (2020) found that Asian, black, and Latinx adolescents in the northeastern United States who got a good night’s sleep coped better with discrimination and discrimination-related stress. Interestingly, the data suggested that discrimination had a more negative impact on sleep for teens who were still in the process of exploring their ethnic/racial identity while it had a less negative impact on sleep for adolescents who had a clear sense of commitment to their ethnic/racial identity. Furthermore, a better night’s sleep was associated with mitigating the negative health impact of discrimination stress; and this in turn, was associated with better mental health over the longer term.
In a recent study published in Child Development, Kelly et al. (2021) examine reciprocal effects of sleep quantity and/or quality and adjustment. They used actigraph measures of average sleep minutes and efficiency, variability in sleep minutes and efficiency, teen reports of sleepiness, and parent reports of externalizing problems. They found that both greater variability in sleep duration and efficiency and sleepiness predicted adjustment problems, while adjustment problems predicted sleepiness.
Recommendations include:
Develop a consistent sleep schedule
Limit and avoid caffeine in the afternoon and evening
Be careful to neither nap too long nor too late in the day
Exercise but be sure to wind down before bedtime
Limit screen time and phone use in the teen’s bedroom