Let teens get more shut-eye
In August, an 18-year-old Englishwoman named Alicia Bettsworth lathered her face and body in three layers of “ultra dark” tanning lotion and fell asleep before she could wash the stuff off. According to the U.K. Sun, the paper she was later quoted in, Bettsworth woke up the next day in a panic. She had the complexion of a burnt yam. “Once I got over the shock I started laughing and thought it was hilarious,” she told the paper. “It’s such a ‘me’ thing to do.”
It’s also such a teen thing to do: not only dousing oneself in cheap tanning lotion (every white adolescent girl has been there) but falling asleep when one really ought to stay awake. Napping at inappropriate times is practically a teenage right of passage. Sometimes, it yields harmless, albeit embarrassing results (Bettsworth’s face has since returned to its natural hue). But other times, oversleeping and the general exhaustion that compels it produce another not so harmless result: spotty attendance at school, irritability, and even anxiety and depression.
The latter is the subject of a new study published in Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation, indicating that a major reason teens are sleepy and moody is not because God made them that way but because they go to school too early in the morning. The study, spearheaded by University of Rochester Medical Center professor Jack Peltz, suggests that teens who start school before 8:30 a.m. may be at a greater risk of experiencing depression and anxiety. The researchers collected data, via an online tool, from nearly 200 American students aged 14 to 17 and divided them into two groups: students who start school before 8:30 a.m. and students who start school after that time. The students were then asked to record their experiences regarding quality of sleep and mental health in a sleep diary. The result? Students who arrived later to school — after 8:30 — experienced fewer depression and anxiety symptoms than those who started earlier. In other words, a little more sleep can go a long way. It seems an obvious conclusion, but it’s not.
It’s not obvious because we tend to view extreme fatigue in teenagers the way we view scraped knees in little kids — as an inevitable fact of life. And an endearing one, too. The sleepy teenager is a fixture in pop culture and even in this very newspaper: the syndicated comic strip Zits stars a shaggy-haired highschooler who is consistently blearyeyed and beat. In one instalment, he walks through his family’s kitchen with a mattress affixed to his back. Adolescence, we are led to believe, is sleep personified.
But what if it doesn’t have to be? What if the negative consequences of teenage exhaustion, everything from napping at inappropriate times to flunking out of school to becoming depressed, aren’t the sole product of biology, but rather of a deeply flawed, man-made schedule? A schedule that serves working adults at the expense of their kids? Plenty of research now exists, in addition to the study described above, indicating that teens do not get enough sleep and that they might be adequately rested should school start a little later, but many Canadian high schools have not adjusted their start times to reflect this. They should.
Of course, scheduling isn’t everything. A 9 a.m. start time isn’t likely to improve a kid’s mental health if every night she falls asleep with her iPhone buzzing beneath her pillow after binge-watching 13 Reasons Why on her laptop in bed. It’s impossible to discuss sleep hygiene without addressing the enormous impact technology has had on our ability to get a decent rest. Scrolling through social media in the dark under the covers and binge-watching shows before bed — these are widespread habits among parents and teens both (I know someone in her mid-60s who recently watched the entire first season of the sci-fi horror show The Mist on Netflix in a single day). In other words, teens aren’t the only demographic whose sleep is suffering at the moment.
But they are the most vulnerable. We should amend our schedules to set them up for success. They’ll wake up refreshed, ready to learn and hopefully (for all the Alicia Bettsworths out there) the same colour as when they went to bed.
Correction: In my Sept. 28 column, “A smooth running TTC would be cooler than a hyperloop to Montreal,” I suggested incorrectly that TTC streetcars derail on a regular basis, forcing drivers to leave their posts to get their vehicles back on track. According to the TTC, streetcars do not derail regularly, and when they do, they are not repaired with passengers present. I mistook the operation of a manual switch (a process that does require the driver to leave the vehicle) for derailment. I apologize for the error. Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.