Adolescence is a period of remarkable growth and opportunity. The cognitive, physical, and psychological changes that take place during these years both help and motivate us to learn from the environments, experiences, and relationships that surround us in ways that can profoundly shape our trajectories and prepare us to succeed in adulthood. Extensive research shows that healthy development, learning, and positive mental health during adolescence all require healthy, restful sleep. Most adolescents do not get the sleep they need, yet sleep is often overlooked in conversations about adolescent well-being.
Following is a summary of research about the importance of sleep for young people and how policies and programs can support this critical adolescent need.
Sleep Duration, Quality, and Consistency All Matter During Adolescence
Amount
The National Sleep Foundation’s recommendations decrease with age throughout adolescence:
Quality
It’s not just time in bed that matters, but the quality of sleep—the number and duration of nighttime awakenings—an adolescent is getting. Using a comfortable pillow and bedding, minimizing light in the room, and reducing noise-emitting distractions like text messages and social media alerts can all improve sleep quality.
Consistency
Although it may seem logical to pack in as many hours of sleep as possible on the weekends, “catching up” on Saturdays and Sundays by sleeping until noon creates its own problems. No one is expected to go to bed at exactly the same time, but wild swings from night to night make it difficult for the body to set its circadian rhythm in a predictable fashion. Such severe schedule changes result in a “chronically jet-lagged state” that adolescents’ circadian system cannot adjust to.
Mental and Physical Health During Adolescence Is Particularly Sensitive to Sleep
Mental Health
The most significant evidence on the importance of sleep for adolescents relates to mental health. Quality sleep can reduce depressive symptoms, even for adolescents facing family-related stressful events such as job loss or the death of a family member. Insufficient sleep is associated with depression and anxiety and increases emotional reactivity and impulsivity.
Most alarming is the relationship between lack of sleep and suicide. Compared to high school students who reported sleeping eight hours per night, those who slept less than six hours were three times as likely to consider or attempt suicide, and four times as likely to attempt suicide resulting in treatment.
Physical Health
Insufficient or inconsistent amounts of sleep across the week during adolescence are associated with short- and long-term effects on health. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to obesity and diabetes as well as impaired immune function.
Brain Function
The amount of sleep an adolescent gets, the quality of that sleep, and the consistency of nightly sleep all appear to directly affect brain functioning in regions crucial for self-control, learning, emotional reactivity, and reward processing.
Schoolwork, Screens, and No Set Bedtime May Interfere with Healthy Sleep
Biological Changes
Changes in the adolescent brain associated with puberty and maturation push adolescents’ circadian rhythm toward more of a “night owl” preference, and slow the buildup of sleep pressure (a biological response that makes us feel sleepy and helps us fall asleep) that makes us more and more tired as the day progresses.
Meanwhile, just as adolescent brains are shifting to a later natural bedtime anyway, they are also becoming more sensitive to external factors, such as blue lights from digital screens, that can further shift them toward later nights.
The effect of these changes is that the late night/early morning schedule many adolescents maintain during the school year becomes increasingly unhealthy.
Families
Even as adolescents become more independent, their families still impact their sleep habits. In general, more positive family relationships are associated with longer and better quality sleep.
Parents should know that adolescents are not too old for a bedtime. Research has shown that adolescents with parent-set bedtimes went to bed earlier (an average of 23 minutes) and got about 20 minutes more sleep per night than their peers without bedtimes. This 20-minute difference in sleep resulted in less fatigue and less trouble staying awake. The timing of the parent-set bedtime also matters. Adolescents with parent-set bedtimes of midnight or later were 24 percent more likely to suffer from depression and 20 percent more likely to have suicidal ideation than adolescents whose parents set bedtimes at 10:00 p.m. or earlier.
Technology
The effect on sleep is the most well-established negative effect of digital technology on adolescents. Electronic devices emit blue light that “tricks” the already light-sensitive adolescent brain into thinking it should be awake, alert, and ready for daylight.
In addition, the dynamic social exchanges and judgments required from social media lead to longer times to fall asleep. Other energizing interactions such as bullying, sexting, and arguments are also more likely to happen late at night. Adolescents who spend the most time on social media have twice the risk of disturbed sleep than those who spent less time on social media.
School demands
Many middle and high schools start earlier than elementary schools. Extended travel times to school require even earlier wake-up times, which mean even less sleep.
Early school start times are a major issue, given adolescents’ natural shift toward later sleep and wake times. Shifting school start times later has been proven to make a difference. After the Seattle School District delayed the start of their public high schools by nearly an hour, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., students’ daily median sleep time increased by 34 minutes a day, and grades increased 4.5 percent.
As school and other activities begin to start earlier in middle and high school, homework and extracurricular activities also increase, pushing bedtimes later. This can create more challenges because staying up later to study actually has a negative effect on learning. Sleep is not simply rest, but an active process where learning is internalized within the brain. In fact, when a high school student sacrifices sleep to study more hours than usual, that student can end up increasing academic problems—such as struggling on an assignment or a test—the next day.
Broader Inequities Are Linked to Sleep Inequality
There is no doubt that sleep is a public health issue for all adolescents. But the burden of insufficient sleep appears to weigh heavier on adolescents from racial minority groups and families of low socio-economic status. One study of 250 high school students from low- to middle-income communities showed that while insufficient sleep was a problem for most students, Black male students slept less than any other group. Ethnic and racial discrimination is also associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep quality, largely due to loneliness and stress.
Students from families experiencing economic hardship may face additional obstacles to sleep, such as longer commute times to school (requiring earlier wake-up times), less “optimal” sleep contexts, and after-school jobs.
Given the grave importance of sleep to mental and physical health and learning, the sleep deficits faced by youth who have been impacted by the effects of racial discrimination or economic hardship represent another impediment to equal opportunities for success. Sleep inequality may be a pathway through which social disparities impact health and well-being across the lifespan.
Policy and Program Insights
➢ Given that sleep is habitual, establishing healthy sleep routines and providing interventions when necessary during the early years of adolescence could be particularly impactful across the lifespan.
➢ Settings that are entrusted with adolescents’ residential environments–such as foster homes, juvenile justice facilities, and independent living placements for youth transitioning from systems of care into adulthood–should prioritize providing young people with conditions that promote quality sleep. Because some factors that influence sleep quality are unique to each individual–such as preferences in bedding and pillows–young people themselves should provide input on what works best for them whenever possible.
➢ Schools, employers, and youth-serving programs should structure schedules to help adolescents prioritize healthy sleep. This could include delaying school start times, limiting the hours that adolescents can work or drive on school nights, or avoiding early-morning or late-evening meetings or practice times.
➢ Technology companies should be partners in promoting healthy sleep habits in adolescence. For example, social media platforms and apps could include settings that promote better sleep such as automatic “do-not-disturb” periods or minimization of blue light at certain times of day.
➢ What happens at home is crucial. Fund programs that support parents’ and caregivers’ ability to identify and promote healthy sleep habits in the home, such as quiet times before bed or limitations on technology use at night.
