Should High School Start an Hour Later? The Science of Sleepy Teenagers

Beep beep beep beep. Thud. Silence.  Beep beep beep. Parents across the world are familiar with the sound and may even be unwilling participants in the struggle to wake their children for high school. Teens everywhere press the snooze buttons on their alarms, cover their heads with their pillows, and ignore the smell of breakfast wafting into their rooms.  With the battle families face getting their high-school age kids up in the mornings, parents may be asking, “Why is this so hard?” Perhaps a better question is this:  Does this have to be so hard?

Science: teenage sleep cycles are naturally delayed

Addressing the age-old presumption that sleepy teenagers are simply lazy, Russel Foster explains in his article The Science of Sleepy Teens that teenagers are built with physically different sleep cycles than the adult world. Foster shares that the physical needs of teens and their sleep cycles change during adolescence, encouraging them to delay sleep and wake times by about two hours as compared to their pre- and post- adolescent counterparts. While science hasn’t quite figured out why, these sleep changes appears to be linked to hormonal changes during adolescence.

Additionally, Foster points out that increased permissiveness of parents allows relaxed rules about bedtime and technology promotes sustained alertness at the end of the day, which, as anyone who has stayed up too late on a work night late to watch a movie knows, has a significant influence on the ability to wake the next morning.

We all know sleep is important. Research supports the importance of sleep’s role in learning and teachers can confirm that drowsy kids make terrible students. In addition to affecting learning, Foster points out that sleep loss has a negative health effect increasing the risks for obesity, diabetes, and other health effects. Tired students use stimulants like caffeine in order to stay awake for learning, which also negatively influences student health and ability to learn.

Studies confirm benefits of later school start times

Due to these odd teenage sleep schedules, Foster points out several schools that are attempting to stave off the negative effects of sleep deficits by promoting a later start time. He cites a 1997 University of Minnesota study of high schools in the Minneapolis Public School District that changed their morning start time from 7:15 to 8:40. Foster also highlights a school in the UK whose students responded well to a start time of 10 a.m. instead of 9 a.m.. These changes raised student attendance and performance, lowered the number of drowsy students, and significantly decreased the self-reported rates of depression in student bodies.

The American populace tends to agree. According to the National Sleep Foundation’s survey on school start times, 80 percent of respondents said schools should start no earlier than 8 a.m.. American research aligns with Foster’s discoveries; when the Minneapolis high school start times were delayed, students got an average of five more hours of sleep per week, were more alert, and had higher rates of attendance. Unfortunately, changing start time isn’t simple for schools, because administrations have to struggle to adapt busing or sports schedules the new start time and some high school students have after-school jobs that would be affected by later dismissal times.

Changes in start times must include education about good sleep hygiene

There is another important caveat to late start times: Foster insists they must be accompanied with a significant focus on education about the benefits of adequate sleep. He believes that this delayed start time is important, but that sleep education is even more essential. While American public education system may resist delaying high school start times by one to two hours, the change might be a good idea.

At the very least, Foster’s focus on sleep education and daily scheduling is an excellent takeaway from his research. If we can’t modify our school start times to respond to the biological needs of students, at the very least we could consider educating students on the importance of good time management, the avoidance of late-night screen time, and the significance of nine solid hours of sleep each night for the sake of our sleepy high school students.

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.