How can parents help their teenagers get more sleep?
Teenagers can't help it if they are dead tired in the morning and can't get out of bed, says sleep researcher Joëlle Albrecht. But parents can do a lot for their children's sleep hygiene.
Mrs Albrecht, young people have a reputation for not getting out of bed in the morning, they simply sleep a lot. Does science agree with this?
You have to differentiate between two things. Sleeping a lot and sleeping for long periods. It is not true that teenagers sleep a lot. They sleep less than children, but more than adults. Here, too, you have to be careful not to generalise about «teenagers». Puberty is a long developmental stage and a 12-year-old cannot be compared with a 16-year-old. There are also individual differences. It's different if we don't talk about the need for sleep as such, but about sleeping in late in the morning. This is actually absolutely typical for adolescents.
Why is that?
There are various reasons for this. Firstly, biological ones. Everyone has probably heard of the two chronotypes of owl and lark. Larks are morning people and like to get up early, while owls don't get tired until late and go to bed and want to get up late. These are the two extremes, everything in between is much more common.
And the young people are owls?
You can actually see a very strong development in young people in that their chronotype is shifting from lark to owl. As children, the vast majority of people are larks, as we all know too well. But even if a teenager is still more of a lark, teenage larks are usually later than children's larks. The shift at this age is very drastic.
You have to think of it as the young person's body signalling early in the morning: It's still bedtime. It's not time to get up and perform, as parents might think. And conversely, in the early evening hours, the adolescent body is not yet signalling bedtime - there is no question of falling asleep.
They spoke of several reasons for sleeping in late.
Another is the development of autonomy among young people. Parents have less and less influence on boys and girls; instead, the influence of peers is increasing. And this changes their leisure behaviour: going out in the evening, staying up late and partying, more caffeine through coffee, tea and energy drinks. This automatically reduces the opportunity to sleep in the evening and sleep suffers.
The third point is digital media. Firstly, mobile phones and computers emit blue light, which probably reduces the production of melatonin, an important hormone for good sleep. This makes it more difficult to fall asleep. Secondly, we need daylight for a regular sleep-wake rhythm. So sitting indoors in front of a computer all day is also problematic in this respect.
Why is it so important for teenagers to sleep well?
Getting enough and good sleep is important throughout life as it plays a significant role in our physical and mental health. In addition, children and adolescents are developing and a lot is happening in the brain. Any disruption, including a lack of sleep, can have negative consequences.
We know that metabolic diseases such as diabetes and mental illnesses such as depression are linked to sleep. Deep sleep in particular plays an important role. Brain activity during deep sleep has to do with brain maturation and learning processes. The stronger the deep sleep, the better the brain retains what has been learnt and consolidates it in the long term.
Is it a new development that young people are getting too little sleep?
No, it's always been like that. The image of young people not sleeping in is true. It is usually simply impossible for them to fall asleep early enough in the evening. And because school and work require them to get up very early, this leads to a lack of sleep during the week.
How can we help young people to be more rested?
Parents cannot influence school start times, so the options are rather limited. However, they can ensure good sleep hygiene: that the young person gets as much daylight as possible in the first half of the day and consumes as little caffeine as possible in the second half.
It is not helpful to simply send young people to bed early.
Regular bedtimes help and if the smartphone is no longer used so intensively in the evening. It may be possible to persuade young people to read a book in the evening instead of watching an action film on their laptop. It is not helpful to simply send young people to bed early. They then lie there and realise that they can't fall asleep. This can lead to the conviction that they have sleep problems.
Would a later school start time actually help young people?
This is a question that we also asked ourselves and analysed in more detail during the first lockdown. There was no need to travel to school, and homeschooling often started later than regular lessons. The young people in our study actually slept more than an hour longer than the control group, which is a very clear result. We also investigated how important a later start to school would be to the young people themselves. Three quarters of respondents were in favour of this. Incidentally, slightly more than half of the teachers also favoured it.
For a long time, sex hormones were blamed for this nerve-wracking balancing act. Today we know that the brain is primarily to blame for this exceptional mental state. The brain undergoes a complete reorganisation during puberty. Neural connections with information about all the things we like to do and do often are strengthened, while others are broken down. A teenager's interests influence how their brain develops. This happens in the form of a major construction site and with the usual delays associated with major construction sites. When construction is taking place on one corner, another part of the brain has to temporarily take over.
This has consequences: The frontal lobe, for example, is responsible for planning, assessing risks and acting sensibly. If this part is being remodelled, the amygdala, the so-called amygdala nucleus, takes over. However, the amygdala is inherently responsible for processing and regulating emotions - rational decisions are hardly possible with it.
The chaos in the teenage brain is also the cause of other fairly well-known phenomena. The sleep hormone melatonin is released one to two hours later than in adults, so going to bed early is difficult. And the fact that male adolescents in particular have a preference for risky situations is not due to exorbitantly high testosterone levels, but to the fact that the reward system with the happiness hormone dopamine does not function as usual. If there is too little of it, stronger kicks are needed for euphoric feelings. If there is too much dopamine, there is no stimulus for activities of any kind. Precisely because it is constantly busy building up and breaking down, the brain of young people is not only unpredictable, but also fragile: toxins such as alcohol, tobacco and drugs damage the brain structures particularly severely at this time.
What conclusions should we draw from this knowledge?
Politicians should reconsider starting the school day later, at least for older pupils. However, if school is to start later in the morning, something else about the school day would of course have to change. One option would be to move the entire timetable back. However, this would have a negative impact on family life and hobbies. That doesn't seem to be a good solution.
What can the solution look like?
Fewer free periods in the timetable and breaks that are five to ten minutes shorter could ensure that there is more time in the morning - but of course this must also be feasible for the school. Science has clearly shown that young people are less productive and less able to concentrate in the first lesson, and many teachers have also noticed this. This should be worth us as a society breaking down the norms and having a new discussion about how we can organise school in such a way that young people are able to perform when they are sitting in class.
