Many young people are sleeping less than they should which causes many health issues and ill-effects making it necessary to understand what is behind this phenomenon.
Sleep experts agree that adolescents require at least nine hours of sleep to function productively in school and less than seven hours will put them off their mark as this amounts to insufficient sleep.
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To find out if many youth are indeed sleeping less and yo understand the reasons behind this, researchers from Iowa State University in Ames examined data from two national government funded surveys of more than 360,000 teenagers which have been conducted since 1991 and 2007 respectively.
The Monitoring the Future survey of sleep duration and time use asked U.S. students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades how frequently they got at least seven hours of sleep, while the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey which started in 2007 asked 9th-12th-grade students how many hours of sleep they got on an average school night.
The researchers found that compared to 2009, adolescents were 16 to 17 per cent more likely to report sleeping less than seven hours a night on most nights. It was found that about 40 percent of adolescents in 2015 slept less than seven hours a night which is 58 percent more than in 1991.
The researchers also found that the more time spent online, as reported by adolescents, the less they slept. Teens who spent five hours a day were 50 per cent more likely to report getting less sleep than those who only spent one hour online each day.
The researchers found a correlation between increased smartphone use in 2009 and the increase in the number of students sleeping less between 2009 and 2015.
The researchers believe that teenagers may be using smartphones when they should be sleeping and also the blue light emitting from these devices, as reported in previous studies, can contribute to less sleep as it interferes with the body’s natural sleep-wake patterns.
The study also found that other activities linked to short sleep duration, such as homework time, working for pay, and TV watching, were relatively stable or decreased over this time period, making it unlikely that these factors caused the sudden increase in short sleep duration.
The scientists advise that smartphone use should be limited to two hours a day and particularly important not to use screen devices before bed – valuable advise not only for teenagers but also for adults.
To get a great nights sleep consistently, put those digital devices away and make sure children have limited use of it especially at night.
Source: Sleep Medicine
