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Let Teenagers Sleep In

nytimes.com

171–180 of 317 posts

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#171
post #150
post #18

One of the many fascinating facts I learnt from Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" is that the biorhythms of teenagers are shifted to later hours compared to those of adults in all human cultures of the globe, even in those rare societies hardly affected by technology. In evolution this was likely beneficial to make it easier for teenagers to socialize among themselves without adult disturbance, which was necessary to d…

This sounds like of a 'just so' story, as evolution is not usually considered to act at the group level, but instead at the individual level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection And some evolutionary biologists, like Dawkins, argues that it really acts on genes rather than the individual. So, I might be missing some of the claim, but I find it unlikely that teenagers would stay up later to be away from adul…

You've misunderstood Dawkins.

You can still get completely unselfish individual traits out of selfish gene selection (like the entire chapter on runt gene selection). It looks like group selection, Dawkins only argues that the mechanism is selfish genes.

Even he seems to have forgotten he wrote about that though.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#172

This teenager sleep cycle thing is a bit of a revelation to me. I thought I just had bad habits, but when I was that age, I'd play games most of the evening, maybe do one or two bits of homework at 10om, and then possibly stay up to 1am with some essay that I'd procrastinate on for ages. I'd wake up at something like 7am and sleep on the train until I got into school, and then sleep after getting home at about 4pm fo…

I agree with this as well. No matter how hard I tried, I could not fall asleep early enough to get a decent nights sleep before having to be back at school in the morning. "Just go to bed earlier" and all of the other unhelpful suggestions lofted my way did not solve the problem. As a result, I suffered greatly with chronic fatigue throughout high school and beyond. Had I been able to sleep properly during those year…

This bothers me too. Knowing the sleep requirements of teenagers and how much I actually got, and knowing the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition and growth, I can only imagine that I’d be smarter and taller with proper sleep (and better nutrition) while growing up.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#173

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager

Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep?

The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm).

To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability.

By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out at 3:30 rather than 5. Im sure teachers would prefer to be out earlier to be with their families (or to run extracurriculars). There is no solution that fits everyone so adjustments need to be made by eveybody.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#174

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out…

GP pretty much answered your question in the part of the quote you cut off.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#175

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out…

You literally failed to read every other word that I wrote.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#176

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out…

Sleep rythm. For a lot of people it's not easy to "just go to sleep earlier"

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I looked at the CDC paper that seems to have influenced this article[1], the average start time for middle school is 8:04, and for high school 7:59. Elementary schools weren't sampled in it. A later journal article just sampling Kentucky[2] shows elementary starting at 8:05, middle at 8:00, and high school at 8:0:1. Elementary is also the most likely to start before 8, but their average was raised by ten percent s…

With elementary it's probably a result of doing morning and afternoon classes.

The elementary range was 7 to 9:10, though two were removed from the sample for starting at 1:40.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#178

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out…

That's not how that works. You can go to bed early, but you won't fall asleep. You'll close your eyes and try to sleep, try to relax and empty your mind, yet you will not fall asleep.

Speaking as someone who suffers from the same as OP and heard this suggestions over a million times.

The worst part of this is that society sees those with sleep "disorders" as being lazy and undisciplined, even when their grades (or whatever other measurable output) are higher than their early bird counterparts.

But to be fair to your comments about "no size fits all", there is nothing stopping schools from offering two different schooling times. The school I went to offered classes from either 07:15 to 13:00 or from 13:15 to 19:00. The ratio of early/late students was about 50/50 amongst the younger and 70/30 for high schoolers.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#180

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out…

> If you are an early riser, you should know that as someone with a sleep disorder I view "helpful" suggestions like "get some exercise" to be roughly equivalent to suggesting that gay people just need to pray the gay away

Learn to read, AI chatbot.

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