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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#41

Post by jaggederest »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #30
Jun8 wrote: post #15

This post on the front page was SO timely for us! My son (16) was feeling very sleepy and tired the past week. On Friday he took a brief nap at 5pm, but woke up next morning, after 15 hours. This morning when I went to wake him up at 6am he just couldn’t make it so I let him stay at home. This never happened before.

Please have him do a sleep study. It turned out that I had undiagnosed narcolepsy for decades. Sleeping 15 hours is exactly what I used to do. It's a low cost high return kind of thing. If I'd had early diagnosis, I wouldn't have been fired due to getting jobs that really, really wanted my butt in a chair at exactly 9am. ( https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150 ) That said, the rate of narcolepsy is…

Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated. Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing well in life instead of struggling every day.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#42

Post by burlesona »

My high school in Texas started at 9:05 am. Sample size of 1, but my experience was:

(a) It still felt “early” to me at the time, but not “difficult” to be up for.

(b) I don’t remember anyone complaining about school starting early or people being generally sleep deprived - if someone was exhausted in school we were all amused and curious what adventures they’d been having to stay out way too late.

(c) I do recall that there was an optional “early period” that started at 7:30 and some people took classes then or had sports stuff at that time, and I specifically remembering thinking that you had to be out of your mind to participate in anything requiring you to be up that early.

By contrast my wife, who is much more the “go to bed on time” type than I ever was, had band at 6am and school at 7:30, and describes her high school as a blur that she slept through half of.

So the article’s recommendation for a 9am start time seems pretty logical to me.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#43

Post by satvikpendem »

flandish wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

If.. uhh… society wasn’t so capitalistically expensive as to require the entire household’s adults to work, a lot of these logistical concerns would work out. Resulting in smarter and healthier children. But: smart and healthy children demand wages as adults that cut into shareholder profits…

> If.. uhh… society wasn’t so capitalistically expensive as to require the entire household’s adults to work

It is a tragedy of the commons problem. As soon as the other spouse starts working, the family has more money, but once every family thinks to have both partners working, sellers will catch on and increase their prices, bringing you back to the initial problem but now with one fewer spouse at home. It's not a capitalism problem, it's a general markets problem.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#44

Post by solveit »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school)

What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#45

Post by justinlink »

tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

To answer some of the questions posed to this comment, I really think the problem is many school districts do not have enough buses and drivers to transport their entire student body at the same time.

By having secondary start first, you require 50% less buses.

If we were to switch secondary goes second and primary age students go first, your primary age children would leave for school around 7am and arrive home at 3pm. Most parents are not home at 3pm and this causes a large problem for families. In some instances, the older children who are in secondary schools -- watch the younger children until parents get home.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#46

Post by lotsofpulp »

krolden wrote: post #35
Analemma_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, IIRC Boston actually tried this, and the uproar from parents whose schedules were thrown into disarray was so intense it had to immediately be walked back. It sucks, but there are broader considerations at play.

Sounds like parents have too much to worry about since both parents have to work or their house will be foreclosed on. Ive read some speculation that the women's right to work movement was just a ploy to double the workforce. Not only that, thet get double the workers for less money since nearly all women are paid less than their male counterparts.

It could have had something to do with women desiring independence.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#47

Post by legitster »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

This is why we have school busses. Why are children being tasked with transporting other children to school?

School busses are shared across age ranges. So teenagers get the first bus, then middle schoolers get one an hour later, then grade schoolers.

So if you punt the highschool bus to later, you are either making for a very late school day, or making younger kids wake up earlier.

Or the solution could be to triple the cost of school transportation.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#48

Post by phillipcarter »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

> These large scale school systems treat students like cattle

I think that's by design, though, as school primarily exists as extended daycare so that parents can work.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#49

Post by sologoub »

bmitc wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

This showcases other problems with American society. With poor social support structures and urban design, kids can't simply walk to and from school, take public transportation, or ride school provided transportation to remove parents being chauffeurs.

That would not fix the coordination problem - if the family includes one of each (elementary, middle and high school kids) you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone ready and head out. Let’s say they all don’t have to leave at the same time, but most other activities have to be coordinated and the sheer noise in the household will wake people up, not to mention it’s a bit easier to feed all 3 kids together.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#50

Post by exfatloss »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

To steelman those school administrators/policy makers, we barely know how the human body even works and how to maintain it.

These mechanisms like diet and sleep have feedback cycles of months, year, or decades. Sometimes even lifetimes. We're extremely bad at learning from them and often fall into short-term traps that cause much bigger long-term harm.

I.e. do we, as a society, know what "a healthy diet" is? Or what "healthy sleep habits" are? I would argue we don't. If you were to survey the median person, they'd probably be pretty outdated and wrong on both. Same for doctors, who typically have their knowledge from med school and haven't kept updated much ever since. In my experience, the typical doctor doesn't know much about chronotypes besides maybe that they exist, and will recite diet dogma from the 80s or whenever he/she graduated.

So while I do agree that the impact is terrible, let's not forget that the median person simply has no idea what works, even the leading frontier of science and researchers is only slightly better off. It's like being mad at medieval peasants for not knowing about electrons or ramjets: it was very unlikely they could've known better at the time.

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