“Sleep is the Golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” (Sleep: In). Sleep deprivation-- miserable, bleak, agonizing-- has robbed a majority of teens in the United States from sleep. Sleep deprivation is the disease or condition of not getting enough sleep. A majority of people including teachers and members of the school board do not understand the importance of sleep in a teen’s life and the consequences that are results of being sleep deprived. A main cause of sleep deprivation is the start times of middle schools and high schools.
It also causes the reaction time to slow down, sometimes behavior becomes unpredictable, ability to make decisions decline. People do not always know when they are not getting enough sleep and when you are deprived of sleep, you are craving sleep. My results from the sleep deprivation test were 11 points and I could not trace the star accurately with my nondominant hand. I also realized that I fall asleep after a lot of activities such as; watching TV, in class during lectures, eating heavy meals, within five minutes of me getting into bed. It’s also hard for me to wake up in the morning without an alarm clock, I struggle to get out of bed, and I hit my snooze button a lot of times.
One needs the recommended amount of sleep in order to prepare and perform well on an exam, which is the primary achievement for students. Students need to be alert and have their memory fully functioning on the day of an exam. Secondly, cramming is a mistake because sleep debt can hinder a student’s ability in learning. Teens need at least 9 hours of sleep per night. During adolescence, their circadian rhythm shifts, this
Infants have sleep stages similar to adults called quiet and active sleep; these are immature versions of SWS and REM sleep. By the age of 6 months a circadian rhythm has become established and by the age of one year infants are usually sleeping mainly at night, with one or two naps a day. The periods of deep sleep lengthen and there is a reduction in the amount of active sleep. It’s not yet known if this sleep is active with dreams. One suggestion to babies sleep patterns is that they sleep to make their parents life easier so they can get on with chores and work which enhances survival.
Between 16 and 35 years and between 35 and 50 years During infancy babies sleep more than everyone else and have different sleep patterns. They tend to sleep for around 16 hours a day but it is not continuous. They wake every hour due to a shorter sleep wake cycle than adults and their sleep stages consist of quiet sleep and active sleep: these are immature versions of SWS and REM sleep. By the time they have reached 6 months, a sleep-wake cycle is established with 1 or 2 naps during the day and as a result periods of sleep then lengthen. By the age of 5 children have an EEG pattern which is similar and looks like those of an adult but they are still sleeping more than adults with an approximate time of 12 hours in sleep and they also have more increase with approximately 30% of the total sleep time being in REM.
Causes and Effects of Sleep Deprivation on College Students According to recent studies by the National Sleep Foundation, 63% of American college students suffer from some sort of sleep deprivation, which is a lack of sufficient sleep to effectively refresh the body, both physically and psychologically. Most college students at one time or another find it difficult to juggle their schoolwork, social life, extracurricular activities, and other responsibilities. Since this is such a prevalent problem across our nation, and being a college student myself, it has led to my interest in researching sleep deprivation in college students. Although most people accept the inevitability of being tired, true sleep deprivation is a complex issue and has both short and long term effects on young adults, specifically college students. My research includes information on the effects of sleeping periodically throughout the day (otherwise known as napping) for a body to get its needed amount of rest and an investigation into if this offers the same benefits that a person gets from sleeping for the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep all at once.
“Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.” The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop. “Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.” Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in
That is a terrible idea because although they’re the ones getting into them, it’s not just the minors fault. First off, the lack of sleep that these teenagers have been getting is one of the main causes on why all of these accidents have been happening. Children need a few more hours of sleep than adults do, so when these kids are waking up at 6 o’clock in the morning to go to school or college, it’s not only effecting their drove to school but also their drive home. The time school starts is another topic but I do believe that pushing the time back to 8 o’clock would make a huge improvement. Secondly, in the article “May Just Delay Deadly Crashes” by Anahad O’Connor he clearly proves by statistics and percentages that there have been more fatal crashes from 18-19 year olds rather than 16-17 year olds.
And, in an article by the National Sleep Foundation, their statistics show that the average 12th grader has about four different electronics in their room, which makes causes distraction and delays falling asleep. pg 523 According to a recent poll, sleep experts recommend 9 or more hours for adolescents but only 20% of children (ages 11-17) the recommended amount and most parents are unaware of their child’s sleep deprivation. And, just as sleep deprivation affects an adults capacity to function properly and make sound decisions, lack of sleep causes adolescents to fall asleep in class, arrive late to school, and feel down and
Studies have shown that young people brains work better in the afternoon even in the night. With school starting at 8:45am we don’t get enough sleep, with all the homework we have to do at night and all the outside activities we don’t get a chance to go to bed early and be ready to wake up early in the morning. If school started at around 10:00am which would give young people a bit of a sleep in and by the time we were at school we would all be woken up and ready to learn. The first two sessions of the day is the time we take to wake up, I know from experience that sometimes I just feel like I can’t remember a lot of what I learnt, it’s like it goes in one ear and out the other. By recess I’m fully awake and finally ready to learn.