According to a new survey of teenagers across the U.S., many of them are losing out on quality of life because of a lack of sleep.
The poll by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), found that as a consequence of insufficient sleep, teens are falling asleep in class, lack the energy to exercise, feel depressed and are driving while feeling drowsy.
The poll results support previous studies by Brown Medical School, and Lifespan affiliates Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital, which found that adolescents are not getting enough sleep, and suggest that this can lead to a number of physical and emotional impairments.
Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, with Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School, chaired the National Sleep Foundation poll taskforce and has been a leading authority on teen sleep for more than a decade.
Carskadon, director of the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Sleep Laboratory and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School, says the old adage 'early to bed, early to rise' presents a real challenge for adolescents.
Her research on adolescent circadian rhythms indicates that the internal clocks of adolescents undergo maturational changes making them different from those of children or adults.
But teens must still meet the demands of earlier school start times that make it nearly impossible for them to get enough sleep.
Carskadon's work has been instrumental in influencing school start times across the country.
Carskadon's newest finding indicates that, in addition to the changes in their internal clocks, adolescents experience slower sleep pressure, which may contribute to an overall shift in teen sleep cycles to later hours.