Turner Today
Sleep Deprivation
By Gregory Rogers
Whether it’s them staying up to watch the newest Television series, staying up working or studying, young people aren’t going to bed at a decent hour resulting in sleep deprivation.
“I usually fall asleep around 1:00 AM,” said Jocelyn Caldero, Tuner Sophomore.
Going to bed night after night can lead to sleep deprivation, an extreme lack of sleep. Sleep deprivation can lead to other medical problems such as illness, weakness of the body, and of course, drowsiness.
“[When I wake up] I want to go back to sleep, my body feels tired, like I’m sick,” said Jocelyn.
In addition to weakness of the body, sleep deprivation can lead to delirium, loss of concentration, impaired judgement, and eventually narcolepsy. The National Sleep Foundation reports that teens need at least 9 ¼ hours of sleep each night (some can survive on 8 ½ ) a study conducted by the NSF found that only 15% of teens were getting 8 ½ hours of sleep at the most. It has been reported that students who get their full 9 ¼ hours of sleep are more alert, perform better in the classroom, and are less likely to feel depressed or that they need to make a visit to the nurse or the counselor.
“I went to sleep around 10:00 and made mostly As and some Bs last semester,” said Jordan Taylor, Turner Sophomore.
We go back to the question: What is keeping teens up? Doing some simple estimations, if a student works a job after school it is most likely a 3 hour or a 5 hour shift, so from 4-9PM or 5-10PM. Then if a student is in athletics or marching band then they will have a game scheduled probably around 6 or 7 that might not let out until 9 or 10, if the game is far away then you also have to add on the drive home. Finally, most students are assigned homework and each student has 7 classes, so 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes of homework for each class would be anywhere from 3.5 hours to 14 hours (at the maximum).
“I think it’s less of a ‘Not going to bed on time’ issue and more of a stuffed schedule issue,” said Ellen Underwood, R.L. Turner Counselor.
And of course, teenagers being teenagers, they also want to allocate time in their life to play video games, go shopping, see a movie, and watch television. But there is also another factor:the smartphone, the laptop, the tablet. With such ease of access to YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, SMS Messaging, and Snapchats people (not just teenagers) have reinforced these addictions to technology where they constantly have to keep checking for notifications and updates.
“Students not being able to ‘un-plug’ is definitely another issue. There’s a time and a place for it but I’ve heard of students texting and tweeting as late as 2:00AM,” said Mrs. Underwood.
Staring at a bright screen before sleeping is definitely a problem, Mariana Figueiro of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute conducted a study that revealed using an iPad at maximum brightness was enough to delay the body’s melatonin release. To be simple, delay the melatonin, delay the sleep. So instead of staying on your WiFi enabled device until drifting off, drink chamomile tea (no caffeine), count sheep, or read a book to help yourself fall asleep faster so you can be alert and awake the next day.