Teens are sleeping less than ever. Experts say schools can help by pushing back start times.

“Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S. Madi Watkins, 16, usually goes to bed around midnight and wakes up around 8:15 a.m. Her friends who attend school a few towns over have to wake up over three hours earlier. There’s a good reason for the difference. Watkins and her classmates at Mount Desert Island High School start school at an unusual time much later than a lot of high school students: 8:50 a.m. It wasn’t always that way at their school, which is on a little island in Bar Harbor, Maine, on the edge of Acadia National Park. But in the fall of 2020, Principal Matt Haney saw an opportunity to push back his school’s previous start time of 7:57 a.m. — something he’d wanted to do for a long time. “There’s so much evidence to suggest they perform better, their mental health is better, they’re safer drivers, and everything works better with their lives if they don’t have to get up at that really, really uncomfortable hour,” he said. A pair of studies out this month have rung alarm bells around the declining quality and quantity of adolescent sleep, finding young people are getting less sleep on average than in decades before. Experts say just pushing back a school’s schedule could help teens get more sleep and therefore improve their overall health, attendance and even academic achievement. Researchers in a study published this month in the journal Pediatrics found that just 37% of 12- and 13-year-olds and 22% of 18- and 19-year-olds reported getting seven or more hours of sleep at night, representing the lowest rates in 30 years . Rachel Widome, one of the study’s authors and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said the impacts of declining sleep on teen health are grave, including a greater risk of chronic disease. “Adolescents who aren’t getting enough sleep are at greater risk for injury, from accidents, from a variety of mental health concerns,” she said. Efforts to convince schools to change when they start classes go back many years . The reasons why students are getting less sleep range from how busy today’s teens are to social unrest. But another study published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics also points the finger at smartphone usage . Looking at the data from phones of 657 young people, researchers found adolescents spent a mean of 50 minutes on their phones between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. School administrators can’t control student scrolling habits or societal unrest, but Widome’s study suggests there is one action they can take: push school start times back. Other research suggests doing so would help teens especially get more sleep . Federal data shows average start time for high schools by state varies widely , ranging from 7:30 a.m. in Louisiana to 8:34 a.m. in South Carolina. One analysis found that start times between 8:30 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. were associated with better developmental outcomes , more sleep, and less negative moods among adolescents. Some states are moving in this direction. A California law went into effect in 2022 mandating classes begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. for public high schools and 8 a.m. for middle schools. Changing school start times can come with unintended consequences, however, and resistance. Parents, for instance, also have to get to work in many cases. And teachers may have to shift their schedules. At Haney’s school, the day still ends at 2:15 p.m., so educators have to pack a lot of instruction into one day. But Widome said the trade-offs are worth it. She recalled that years ago, while administering a survey about sleep to students early in the morning, she observed a teen falling asleep at their desk, head resting on her survey. “I wish schools could embrace a culture of sleep where they’re no longer acting like it’s this super macho thing to just do a million things and stay up late to do all your homework,” she said. In Maine, Haney said that change has brought dividends for his students. Teachers say the teens come to their first class ready to engage, and Haney believes they didn’t suffer as much academically as many others did following the pandemic. Watkins and her schoolmate Bree Yarborough, 17, said they like their school’s start time because they find they have energy for their first class of the day. For Yarborough, that’s Spanish, which she said takes some zeal, because they dance and have animated conversations to practice the language. “My brain does not work whenever I get little amounts of sleep,” Yarborough said. Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org .

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