Essay On Why Schools Should Start Later

1937 Words8 Pages

Why Schools Should Acquire Later Start Times A substantial amount of evidence shows that the majority of adolescents don’t get nearly enough sleep for maximal/ideal functioning during the day. I believe this is immensely accurate, as I can relate to this 100%, associated with multiple friends my age that are also able to understand. Adolescents tend to increasingly stay up later as they advance through high school, (Danner and Phillips), which, in my opinion, could possibly be due to parents giving their children slightly more freedom than when they were younger. Teenagers’ tending to stay up later results in early school start times decreasing their amount of sleep and therefore increases the adolescents’ daytime sleepiness. In teenagers, the cause of redundant sleepiness is often sleep deprivation, which is simply the condition of not having enough sleep. Sleep deprivation in adolescents has varying causes which contain the demands of school, extra-curricular activities, social activities, and work outside the home. Another crucial component affecting the sleep of teenagers is the tendency towards sleep delay. The delayed sleep phase syndrome is described by the complication of falling asleep at a …show more content…

The optimal amount of sleep for teenagers remains at about 9 to 9 ¼ hours per night, (JA et. al.), which results in the ideal wake time of roughly 8 a.m. With majority of schools in the U.S. having school start times ranging from 7:40 a.m. to 8:33 a.m., (Rettner), most students are unable to wake up at 8 a.m. Personally, I know that it is excessively difficult to achieve 9 hours of sleep every night, especially on week days when I have to wake up a few hours earlier than on the weekend. Similarly, I also fathom the battles of getting ready quickly in the morning. I might be a girl, but as for anyong, getting ready for school in the mornings in under 30 minutes can be utterly