Talk:Adolescent sleep

Adolescence (colloquially known as the teenage years) witnesses reductions and fluctuations across a variety of sleep indices. Duration and quality reduce to suboptimal levels and variability and latency (the amount of time it takes to fall asleep) increases [1]. Additionally, there is a shift in the body's circadian rhythm such that sleep and wake timings become later during adolescence [2]. Poor sleep has been linked with altered brain functioning and development, poor mental and physical health, as well as higher rates of disease and mortality. The concerns surrounding poor sleep during adolescence has garnered significant public attention, especially concerning policies related to school start times.

Sleep Recommendations The National Sleep Foundation recommends that teenagers (14-17 years) obtain 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Their recommendation further stipulates that less than 7 hours and more than 11 hours of sleep may be harmful. Additionally, it is recommended that young adults (18-25 years) obtain 7 to 9 hours of sleep and avoid sleep less than 6 hours and more than 11 hours.

Adolescent sleep researchers have conducted studies to provide stronger empirical evidence for sleep recommendations. Fuligni and colleagues (2019) examined a sample of American adolescents and found that younger adolescents, especially those with elevated levels of internalizing symptoms, need more sleep in order to experience optimum levels of positive mood the next day [3]. Additionally, another study examining Mexican-American youth found that roughly 7.5 hours of sleep was predictive of high GPA but 8.75 hours of sleep was predictive of lower internalizing symptoms [4]. This finding suggests that optimal sleep duration differs depending on the outcome.

More research is needed to understand individual differences in sleep duration during adolescence.

Sleep Duration Sleep duration has been declining since the early 90s according to research [5]. Evidence also suggests that teen females, ethnic minorities, and those of low socioeconomic status experience the lowest durations. Puberty is thought to contribute to poor sleep during adolescence as teens undergo physical and social maturation. A burgeoning area of adolescent sleep research is focused on understanding the contribution of technology-use to poor teen sleep.

Brain. Poor sleep duration has been found to be related to altered brain development during adolescence. Telzer and colleagues (2015) found that teens with greater day-to-day variability in their sleep duration had lower white matter integrity one year later [6]. This result remained when controlling for sleep duration, which suggests that sleep variability may be more consequential for teen brain development than simply duration. Another study found that sleep duration was strongly associated with gray matter volume of the bilateral hippocampus among a sample of healthy children and adolescents [7].

Risk-taking. Poor sleep duration and increased risk-taking has been a well-established association in the adolescent sleep literature. A recent meta-analysis reported that poor sleep duration results in a 1.43 times greater odds of engaging in risky behaviors [8]. The direction of the relationship between risk-taking and sleep duration is still unknown, thus causal claims cannot be made.

Emotion. A plethora of research shows that low sleep duration is linked with poor mood [9]. Furthermore, youth who report low sleep duration also demonstrate difficulties with emotion regulation [10]. This is of particular concern because adolescents experience fluctuations in mood as a result of pubertal maturation, however, poor sleep duration worsens mood and regulation abilities rendering these adolescents vulnerable.

Chronotype Adolescence is characterized by an evening chronotype preference with adolescents engaging in late bed and wake times [11]. An evening chronotype is unique to the period of adolescence compared to childhood and adulthood which are characterized by a morning chronotype. Eveningness during adolescence is linked with increased substance use [12] and worse overall mood [13].

Sleep Measures Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a well-validated and widely used self-report questionnaire that measures sleep quality [14]. Nineteen items are combined to create seven component scores of sleep, and those component scores are then used to create an overall “global score” of sleep quality. The seven components consist of subjective sleep quality, sleep disturbances, sleep duration, sleep latency, habitual sleep efficiency, use of sleep medications, and daytime dysfunction. The PSQI has a high internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83) [15]. The PSQI has been used in many studies assessing adolescent sleep quality.

Actigraphy. Actigraph watches are commonly used to gather objective measures of sleep [16]. The watch is worn on the non-dominant wrist and measures sleep using body movement. Data gathered from the watch includes sleep duration, number of awakenings, total minutes of nighttime awakenings, and latency.

Policy: School Start Times Recently, adolescent sleep has been a hot topic because of the push for policies that delay school start times particularly for U.S. High School Students. A U.S. Department of Education report on average school start times found that among a sample of 18,360 high schools in the United States, the average school start time was 7:59AM [17]. A policy statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics states that high schools should start no earlier than 8:30am [18]. News articles suggests that there are several societal barriers to shifting school start times for high school students such as district bus schedules and parents’ work schedules, which have been cited as barriers to pushing school start times in state bills for states that have tried and/or successfully delayed their school start times. A myriad of empirical evidence supports the delay of high school start times with studies showing that delayed start times are associated with increased sleep duration, higher sleep quality, and better overall adolescent functioning.

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SP24 - Sect 201 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 March 2024 and 4 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jiangjiao Fan (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by XiaoyuChennyu (talk) 21:59, 30 March 2024 (UTC)