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Let Teenagers Sleep In

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#211

Post by devxpy »

scrollaway wrote: post #206
devxpy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to back this up with an actual piece of research. Here is an excerpt from the book "Why we sleep" (which BTW is written by a neuroscientist and psychology prof working at the Center for Human Sleep Science ) > An adult’s owlness or larkness, also known as their chronotype, is strongly determined by genetics. If you are a night owl, it’s likely that one (or both) of your parents is a night owl. Sadly, society…

I'm a non-24 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake... ). I consistently drift forwards 1-2 hours / day. Nobody believes me when I tell them. I started seriously tracking my sleep a few months back, and two months ago I started to use "Sleep as Android", which has a neat feature that shows you a graph of the times you are asleep. This is mine for the past 2 months: https://i.imgur.com/PHohyO6.…

The book even has a number on this!

> The second unexpected—and more profound—result was that their reliably repeating cycles of wake and sleep were not precisely twenty-four hours in length, but consistently and undeniably longer than twenty-four hours. Richardson, in his twenties, developed a sleep-wake cycle of between twenty-six and twenty-eight hours in length. That of Kleitman, in his forties, was a little closer to, but still longer than, twenty-four hours. Therefore, when removed from the external influence of daylight, the internally generated “day” of each man was not exactly twenty-four hours, but a little more than that. Like an inaccurate wristwatch whose time runs long, with each passing (real) day in the outside world, Kleitman and Richardson began to add time based on their longer, internally generated chronometry.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#212

Post by ecnahc515 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #204
emodendroket wrote: post #31

> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and extracurricular clubs. Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is al…

> High schools start and end earlier Where? Everywhere I've lived, high school starts earlier and ends later. They have longer days than the elementary kids.

In my HS, we started about 1 hour after elementary school/middle school and got out slightly after them. I recall as a child I had to have a baby sitter until my sister picked me up after getting out of HS, and I remember when I was in HS, I saw them getting picked up by the buses about an hour before mine came.

Our days weren't really any longer, just offset.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#213

Post by smichel17 »

lamontcg wrote: post #154

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…

Honest question: Have you tried waking up at the same time every day -- absolutely NO exceptions -- for a period of 2+ weeks? (Along with this, no snoozing and get up as quickly as possible after your alarm goes off, even if you're a zombie and won't be able to actually do anything for another hour or two).

I ask as a person who's been on both sides of the fence, from 8pm nights and 4am mornings to 4am nights and 1pm "mornings" (and, of course, all manner of ranges in between). I've had months where I'm alert and out of bed 15 seconds after the alarm rings, and months where it takes me 2+ hours to rely wake up (although, on the whole, I'd still consider myself a "morning person", since I tend to feel better and get more done when I'm on the early shift).

I've found that, no matter what time I'm waking up, my ability to start moving in the "morning" is dependent in huge part (55%) on a consistent wake up time, and in small part dependent on getting enough sleep (20%) and getting up immediately instead of snoozing or otherwise staying horizontal (25%). Percentages are non-scientific estimates.

I do acknowledge, it's hard as hell to transition to being a "morning person" when I haven't been for a while, because it's just SO hard to force myself out of bed for the 1-2 week period I need to aclimate. Especially since in a half-awake state I don't have much mental capacity to push through the sleepiness. And it would be harder if I'd never experienced easy mornings to know they're possible.

For the record, to preempt a rebuttle along these lines: I also don't dispute that some people, for whatever reason -- genetics, life circumstances, etc -- may just not be able to make the switch. I am curious whether whether it's a matter of "I've done the above and it had no effect on me" or "The above is just impossible for me."

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#214

Post by devxpy »

sk5t wrote: post #197
dpatrick86 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6:30AM is just some other city's 11:30AM... the difference in between is just light exposure, food consumption, and activity (the three big zeitgebers). Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across the world, it's pretty obvious that your wake and sleep time would have to be a lot more malleable than you suggest.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The cycle of light and dark is of the essence here.

It isn't.

> Kleitman and Richardson were to be their own experimental guinea pigs. Loaded with food and water for six weeks and a pair of dismantled, high-standing hospital beds, they took a trip into Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, one of the deepest caverns on the planet—so deep, in fact, that no detectable sunlight penetrates its farthest reaches. It was from this darkness that Kleitman and Richardson were to illuminate a striking scientific finding that would define our biologicalrhythm as being approximately one day (circadian), and not precisely one day. In addition to food and water, the two men brought a host of measuring devices to assess their body temperatures, as well as their waking and sleeping rhythms. This recording area formed the heart of their living space, flanked either side by their beds. The tall bed legs were each seated in a bucket of water, castle-moat style, to discourage the innumerable small (and not so small) creatures lurking in the depths of Mammoth Cave from joining them in bed. The experimental question facing Kleitman and Richardson was simple: When cut off from the daily cycle of light and dark, would their biological rhythms of sleep and wakefulness, together with body temperature, become completely erratic, or would they stay the same as those individuals in the outside world exposed to rhythmic daylight? In total, they lasted thirty-two days in complete darkness. Not only did they aggregate some impressive facial hair, but they made two groundbreaking discoveries in the process. The first was that humans, like de Mairan’s heliotrope plants, generated their own endogenous circadian rhythm in the absence of external light from the sun. That is, neither Kleitman nor Richardson descended into random spurts of wake and sleep, but instead expressed a predictable and repeating pattern of prolonged wakefulness (about fifteen hours), paired with consolidated bouts of about nine hours of sleep.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#215

Post by ItsMe000001 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #196
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, unless you keep a completely unnatural and very strenuous artificial light environment. Not just any light source either. This is worse than people who can't eat most foods and have to have an extremely picky diet, because at least they can do that anywhere and can create a stash of food. To expect this of anyone is ignorant and cruel, IMO. > Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across…

What do you do throughout the year as sunrise and sunset vary? For most of us there is a 4-5 hour difference in sunset between June and December.

Did you read my comment and the comment I replied to? Apparently not, because your reply makes no sense at all. Please, read again, start with the comment I replied to. You can also check out the other replies to him to understand what the subject of the discussion is.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#216

Post by artpepper2 »

wmeredith wrote: post #87
majos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is true. Yes, adolescence is when childbearing ability and the associated hormonal incentives start, but where is this "sex must happen at night" component coming from? If anything, I would guess that's a modern phenomenon being retrofitted onto the past.

It’s pure conjecture until the commenter posts some sources. Now I feel patronizing pointing it out, but you don’t have to stay up late to have sex. I think this is modern cultural norms being propped with pseudo science.

I mean, my impression from reading 19th century novels is that people used to just slip into a convenient glen or wooded area, it wasn't that hard before the industrial era.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#217

Post by ItsMe000001 »

devxpy wrote: post #214
sk5t wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? The cycle of light and dark is of the essence here.

It isn't. > Kleitman and Richardson were to be their own experimental guinea pigs. Loaded with food and water for six weeks and a pair of dismantled, high-standing hospital beds, they took a trip into Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, one of the deepest caverns on the planet—so deep, in fact, that no detectable sunlight penetrates its farthest reaches. It was from this darkness that Kleitman and Richardson were to illuminate…

> one of the deepest caverns on the planet—so deep, in fact, that no detectable sunlight penetrates its farthest reaches

And THAT is the point. Do you want OP to get away from the sun, so that it does not reset his zeigebers?

> generated their own endogenous circadian rhythm in the absence of external light from the sun.

I mean, you even quoted it yourself.

Reminder: Topic still is OPs post and the reply to it that told him it's no big deal to adjust to 6.40, "proof" being there are other time zones.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#218

Post by lamontcg »

scrollaway wrote: post #206
devxpy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to back this up with an actual piece of research. Here is an excerpt from the book "Why we sleep" (which BTW is written by a neuroscientist and psychology prof working at the Center for Human Sleep Science ) > An adult’s owlness or larkness, also known as their chronotype, is strongly determined by genetics. If you are a night owl, it’s likely that one (or both) of your parents is a night owl. Sadly, society…

I'm a non-24 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake... ). I consistently drift forwards 1-2 hours / day. Nobody believes me when I tell them. I started seriously tracking my sleep a few months back, and two months ago I started to use "Sleep as Android", which has a neat feature that shows you a graph of the times you are asleep. This is mine for the past 2 months: https://i.imgur.com/PHohyO6.…

Yeah I used to do that in college.

Wish society would be more accepting of that.

I'd likely be way more productive if I could just do that, and wouldn't have the sleep dep days that I do when I just power through it on zombie mode for a day or three until I can get back on the 24 hour schedule.

I find 5 mg of melatonin taken an hour before I got to bed combined with learning to use a sleep mask helped a lot. I still need to go to bed listening to something (that isn't too interesting to me) in order to derail my thoughts as well. Plus not eating late, and something in junk food (MSG/salt?) tends to keep me up all night almost in hot sweats. But with all that it has just become manageable so that I can hold down a job.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#219

Post by devxpy »

rerx wrote: 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…

A better argument is presented by this excerpt from that book.

> humans likely evolved to co-sleep as families or even whole tribes, not alone or as couples. Appreciating this evolutionary context, the benefits of such genetically programmed variation in sleep/wake timing preferences can be understood. The night owls in the group would not be going to sleep until one or two a.m., and not waking until nine or ten a.m. The morning larks, on the other hand, would have retired for the night at nine p.m. and woken at five a.m. Consequently, the group as a whole is only collectively vulnerable (i.e., every person asleep) for just four rather than eight hours, despite everyone still getting the chance for eight hours of sleep. That’s potentially a 50 percent increase in survival fitness. Mother Nature would never pass on a biological trait—here, the useful variability in when individuals within a collective tribe go to sleep and wake up—that could enhance the survival safety and thus fitness of a species by this amount. And so she hasn’t. 


Thanks for giving me the inspiration to read it. This book is just fantastic.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#220

Post by ecnahc515 »

noobermin wrote: post #148
yurishimo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not necessarily that they become failures but rather that they are being deprived of the mental capacity to reach their full potential every day. They would be more successful if they got more sleep, so it makes sense to give teens a couple more hours to benefit society as a whole, even if only marginally.

I don't think my point is clear so let me restate it. 75% is a majority of people. 75% of people aren't deficient in some way, as far as I know, staying up all night as teens and living a life didn't make them maladjusted or deprived in some sense. Moreover, I don't know or feel like there is evidence that high performers in society sleep more than anyone else. The whole "sleep more" mantra feels like the "eat less f…

Just because you can't see if people are drastically affected in ways you perceive; especially years after the fact, doesn't mean it's not affecting people.

It's just as possible the "high performers who don't sleep" are the least healthy people in society, and our society rewards unhealthy habits...oh wait...

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