Sleep deficit in adolescence has been recognised and commented on for some time. It is well recognised that sleep duration affects the health of children and adolescents. Shorter sleep durations have been associated with poorer academic performance, unintentional injuries, and obesity in adolescents.
Earlier this year, a study looked at this school population and their experience of sleep and sleep quality.
General education classes were randomly selected from a convenience sample of three high schools in the American Midwest. Three hundred eighty-four ninth- to twelfth-grade students (57%) completed a self-administered valid and reliable questionnaire on sleep behaviours and perceptions of sleep.
The findings showed that most respondents, (91.9%) obtained inadequate sleep. In many ways this is unsurprising as most adolescents seem to live in a "twilight" zone.
How much is due to poor sleep hyigene and bad habits around sleep is not explored. Nor is there any investigation of what type of sleep disturbance is most common in this group. Other studies suggest that school activities, jobs after school and other hobbies and responsibilities may impact on the sleep schedules of adolescents. One can only hope that in highlighting the difficulties some measures were put in place to address the sleep deficit that these individuals experience.
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