The Science of Sleepy Teenagers—Why Aren't We All Over This?!

My alarm goes off at 7 AM every weekday. I stumble out of bed and sort of wobble all the way to my son's room on the other side of the house. I knock on his door and mumble "are you awake?".

When I hear an affirmative sound, I sleepily remind him about his first class of the day and then stagger back to bed for another hour of sleep.

The next time I wake up, around 8 AM, my son has either already left the house for school or is slouching in front of his first zoom class of the day.

He is a lot like teenage me. Back when I was 16, I used to sleep until noon if left to my own devices. I'd also stay awake until 3 or 4 AM each night, unable to sleep earlier. According to sleep science, this is very normal for teenagers. They have a very different sleep schedule from children or adults.

To say that they are owlish is an understatement.

And they can't help it.

Sometimes, my teenager is really tired around 8 PM only to get a sudden burst of energy around 9 PM. He'll then be unable to sleep until at least 1 AM. It doesn't take a maths genius to realize that if he can't fall asleep before 1 AM but has to get up at 7 AM, he is not getting anywhere near the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep each night.

That's a huge problem.

Sleep is so essential to our cognitive and physical wellbeing that sleep deprivation is a very successful method of torture.

So, why do we insist on torturing our teenagers by making them go to class before 8 AM?

I really don't know!

The science describing all the horrible things that are linked to a lack of sleep in the teenage population is there and has been there for years. We know that just letting school start an hour later is a simple measure that improves academic outcomes across the board independent of other factors. In terms of "educational reform", it's very hard to beat and relatively easy to implement.

And yet, we don't go for it.

We stick to the established system. We stick to what is most convenient for adults.

Is changing the start time of class for high schoolers really that hard?

We have a simple, scientifically proven measure that we could take to substantially increase our teenager's quality of life and academic performance.

Why don't we?

Why aren't we all over this?!