There are only 24 hours in a day and we are supposed to sleep eight of them in order to maintain optimal health. For teenagers, does it really matter which eight hours we sleep? Well according to the National Sleep Foundation, it certainly does.  We don’t realize it, but biological sleep patterns shift during adolescence. This means that as we get older, our bodies naturally want to stay up and get up later. This is why all of a sudden –  when you hit high school – you can’t fall asleep any time before 11:00 pm, even if you know you have to get up in just a few short hours.

The biological process, called circadian rhythms, is what shifts the times for both sleeping and waking during the teenage years. This means, our bodies find it natural to sleep later in the morning and stay up later at night. Many studies show that students perform better in the afternoon than they do in the early mornings. Dr. Neil Stanley of the Surrey Sleep Research Center is an expert in the field of sleep research. “There is a blip in teenagers where they need to have more sleep, but also their timing of that sleep is shifted so they want to go to bed later and get up later in the morning. We know that there is an evolutionary reason why this happens,” said Stanley.

AHS science teacher Eric Lee strongly believes that the key to this debate is to swap the elementary start times with the middle/high school start times. “The older students will have stronger cognitive performance due to later start times. And, the younger students will be able to take advantage of a naturally earlier biological clock,” said Mr. Lee. If we followed his advice, there would be time after a six hour school day for sports, a job, homework, a few hours of socializing – and a full eight hours sleep. Starting high school two hours later would accommodate the change needed in the teenagers 24 hour sleep clock.

Another debate surrounding teens and their sleep habits is if taking more challenging classes later in the day has any effect on grades. Though some argue differently, AHS math teacher Mrs. Patricia Dion believes that personal drive is more important than the time of day a class is held. “Although period one classes are generally quieter than the rest of the day, there is not a big difference academically for the students. Starting later in the day could be a factor, but I think other things like motivation and interest in the subject are more important,” said Mrs. Dion. However, she does think that the optimum time for high school would be 8:30 a.m. Just two hours in the morning would curb many issues from tardiness to missing school all together. It also could be that the motivation needed to succeed in all of our classes no matter what time of day they are held.

This issue has been explored many times before at AHS and other local schools, but problems like scheduling for sports, and other after school activities, has made it hard to alter school hours unless every school changed. Maybe someday that will happen.

Sleep deprivation may not seem like much more than an annoyance but in reality it can cause real problems. Two behaviors vital to success in school are concentration and behavior and both of these are affected by a lack of sleep. In order to succeed, we have to learn how to take care of our biological clocks, and this can be done as easily as keeping the weekday and weekend sleep cycles in synchronization, and by skipping the afternoon naps that can make it harder to fall asleep at an earlier enough time necessary for the full eight hours sleep.

So, the next time someone accuses you of being just another lazy teen, just remind them of that circadium rhythm!