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Let Teenagers Sleep In

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#91

Post by picsao »

majos wrote: post #77
digitailor wrote: post #74

Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage…

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.

Eh, when the rest of society sleeps who you promised to wait because nobody wants to pay screw you money.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#92

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

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…

Perhaps the first question we should answer is if our closest primate relatives have this same behavior among their adolescence? Especially given to what extent adolescence is a social construct and not biological (which seems to clash with the idea this is found to happen in all societies, probably an interesting point to look more into).

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#93

Post by jrnichols »

coding123 wrote: post #7

Or you know have them go to bed at 10 instead of let the play video games until 2am.

The whole "just go to bed early. duh!" mentality never worked for me. It still doesn't. I'd just lay there and couldn't fall asleep.

It's not as easy as "just go to bed earlier."

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#94

Post by digitailor »

andrepd wrote: post #86
digitailor wrote: post #74

Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage…

Aren't you simply making a baseless guess with nothing to back it up? Why would there be biological pressure to mate at night? I don't understand how you're so self assured (unless you read something on this which I haven't, in which case please share :)) If you don't, then I don't understand the purpose of phrases such as >The article misses the point almost to the point of absurdity. >I feel weird having to explain…

I took those out, thanks.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#95

Post by darkerside »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #72
darkerside wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a great way to kill the public secondary school system. What percentage of kids do you estimate would stop going to class under this model?

Make attendance mandatory and create some comfortable spaces for in-between classes.

Attendance is mandatory already. This will just make it easier for kids to leave. In fact, they'll be coming and going all the time. Isn't that the whole point?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#96

Post by Tongueincheek »

jrnichols wrote: post #84
lordnacho wrote: post #53

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…

9 to 5 is the norm. 8 to 5 is absurd.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#97

Post by notyourday »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #72
darkerside wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a great way to kill the public secondary school system. What percentage of kids do you estimate would stop going to class under this model?

Make attendance mandatory and create some comfortable spaces for in-between classes.

We all know that the same teenagers that want to sneak out of their houses at night to go on their escapades (typically 2:1 supervision) would totally follow the rules of mandatory attendance (40:1 supervision )

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#98

Post by escherplex »

andrepd wrote: post #86
digitailor wrote: post #74

Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage…

Aren't you simply making a baseless guess with nothing to back it up? Why would there be biological pressure to mate at night? I don't understand how you're so self assured (unless you read something on this which I haven't, in which case please share :)) If you don't, then I don't understand the purpose of phrases such as >The article misses the point almost to the point of absurdity. >I feel weird having to explain…

Oh, I don't know about that. In Ekrich's ' At Day's Close: Night in Times Past' [1] seems in pre-industrial age society the norm was 'bi-modal sleep'.

First or "deep" or "dead" sleep, as it was sometimes called, often seems to have taken place shortly after sunset, or at least before 10 in the evening. After two to four hours of the night's deepest rest, people would wake up for an hour or two, then resume sleep for another stretch before rising with the light.

During this waking period, people would relax, ponder their dreams, or have sex.

Many might find the later a good description of teenage behavior. Couple that with the physiological fact that

For men, levels of testosterone are highest during sleep and require at least three hours sleep to reach this peak. [2]

And just maybe teenagers are reverting to form.

-----------------------------------------------------------

[1] At Day's Close: Night in Times Past - Ekirch (2006)

[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/chemical-messengers-how-hormone...

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#99

Post by crispyambulance »

digitailor wrote: post #74

Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage…

    > ...no competing theory that does have hard evidence has been proposed, so current behavior is actually the first rationalization.
I think it would be even more reasonable to investigate WHY this is being discovered now rather than a long time ago. What has changed in the lives of teens now compared to 3 or 4 decades ago?

I suspect one thing is a much higher percentage of "structured time". Teens today seem to have far more time obligations than my generation did. As a result, socializing and free-time ends up getting pushed to interstitial times, late at night _and_ online.

Young people need unstructured time for ad-hoc socializing and discovering who they are and there is less opportunity for that now so it happens later at night when their obligations have been met and the time is their own. That's a simpler explanation than primate sexual urges.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#100

Post by unit91 »

> Anyone who talks about sleep as if it’s some kind of inconvenience and getting less of it is a virtue should be challenged. These people are dangerous.

This statement was bizarrely totalitarian. I actually agree with the fundamental premise that many schools probably start too early. But to say those who take the other side are dangerous people who need to be challenged? Too far.

Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous!

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