Do you wake up every morning wishing more than anything just to go back to sleep? Do you find yourself staying up later and later every night? Nearly all teens are suffering from lack of sleep. You find yourself on Twitter, Instagram, texting or maybe doing homework, then you finally look up at the clock and notice it’s already 1 a.m.
On average, human needs about six to eight hours of sleep every night, but for teens that number is actually nine hours of sleep or more. Do you realize that if you should be getting nine hours of sleep every night, assuming you wake up around 6 a.m., you should be going to bed at 9 p.m.? To most teens, going to bed at nine is absolutely crazy.
Normally, getting only six or seven hours of sleep won’t affect you too badly. You might doze off and yawn here or there, but there aren’t any real problems, right? Well, as you would expect, students who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to suffer from lower grades and lowered motivation. Who wants to do anything when you are tired? No one, that’s who.
Not only will sleepy teens do worse in school, but sleepy teen drivers are a threat to public safety. According to the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (try saying that five times fast), there are over 100,000 car accidents (and over 1,500 deaths) caused due to the driver being sleepy, and that drivers under the age of 25 are at a much, much greater risk of being involved in a “drowsy driving” accident.
Lack of sleep also produces many other problems as well. On April 26, 1986, disaster struck at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The engineers working at the time had been working 13 hour shifts. Many people speculate that their lack of sleep was a contributing factor to the catastrophic meltdown. A little closer to home in 1979 at Three Mile Island Power Plant in Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear meltdown in United States history occurred. Partially attributed to sleep deprivation, the engineers failed to diagnose the problem for several hours. By the time the problem had been correctly diagnosed, severe damage had already been done. Long story short, you need to sleep.
In the long run, aside from causing nuclear meltdowns, lack of sleep increases your risk of heart disease, strokes, and high blood pressure. Even physically, sleeplessness can cause you to gain weight and can cause acne. In a study of over 10,000 British adults who received less than 5 hours of sleep a night, they almost double their risk of death, especially from heart disease. Are you scared? Well, you should be. But just remember that there’s a very simple solution: get enough sleep.
Going to bed at a reasonable hour may mean sacrificing an hour or two that you would have spent scrolling through Twitter, Tumblr or whatever else you do at two in the morning. If you have homework that you are struggling to do, try your best to finish it as soon as possible. Some nights you may “have no choice” but to stay up in order to complete all of your homework. Don’t do it every night, though. Besides, you will feel better in the morning if you get a good night’s sleep. If you have trouble falling asleep, try to get into good sleep habits. Go to bed around the same time every night, avoid caffeine later in the day and (as horrible as it seems) try to avoid using your computer, phone or TV right before bed.