Story by Holt Templeton, Artwork by Mallika Sunder

My school in some ways resembles some kind of sleep-deprived dystopia. Wan cheeks are contrasted by dark circles under fatigued eyes. Most of us have retired to a rather dispirited slouch. Coffee guzzling is practically an Olympic sport— a friend of mine, belabored by AP Chemistry, AP Calculus-Based Physics, and some three to five odd math classes, made habit of carrying around a half pot’s amount of coffee in a thermos. An informal poll of my classmates tells me that quality rest is a pretty scarce resource here: most report around three to five hours nightly, while others do a bit better at around six to seven hours. The somnologic overachievers among us get around seven to eight hours of shut-eye each night. According to Johns-Hopkins Pediatrician Michael Crocetti, that still isn’t enough; teens naturally need nine to nine and half hours per night. When that figure was mentioned in my sophomore health class, it was met with laughter. How on earth did we get to this point? And more importantly, what can be done to make healthy amounts of sleep a less humorous concept?

Being sleep deprived produces borderline disastrous consequences for a teenager’s health. In sleep researcher Wendy Troxel’s TedX talk at Manhattan Beach, she states that getting under five hours of sleep produces the same level of impairment as being above a 0.08 blood-alcohol content. That’s the legal limit to drive in the United States. Considering the fact that many of these teenagers are driving, not getting sleep is a public safety hazard. Beyond the public safety component, sleep deprivation produces an impressive laundry list of negative effects on one’s health. Among these include the aforementioned weakened mental faculties—shortened attention span, memory impairment, weaker decision-making abilities—culminating in poorer academic performance. However, the list does not end there. Not getting sleep makes one’s risk of depression skyrocket. Your risk of getting physically sick rises, as sleep is essential for a healthy immune system. Basically, if you can name an ill-effect, sleep can be listed as a cause.

The answer, according to Troxel, lies in later school start times. School start times, around 7:30 am in most parts of the country, need not begin before 8:30 am, per most medical organizations. This reason, combined with technology use, hormones, and demanding after-school schedules, results in a society in which only ten percent of teenagers get the recommended amount of sleep. However, I would argue that the issue runs deeper than snapchat, neurotransmitters, and after-school archery practice. Rather, the real culprit rests in a culture that is willing to sacrifice health and well-being for more hours of work. Going back to my school, the Alabama School of Math and Science, we are doing significantly worse in sleep than an already underperforming teenage population. In this toxic academic culture, the high-achieving academics in America bear the brunt of the health epidemic that is sleep loss. The roots of sleep deprivation run deep, and in order to remedy its negative effects, we as a country will need to reconsider what we as a culture choose to value.

Works Cited

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/teenagers-and-sleep-how-much-sleep-is-enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Zj_InJ4BQ