Celia Mann | Social Media Editor
March 20, 2025
It’s no question that being a high school student comes with a host of challenges. Learning to balance school work, athletics, a social life, and sleep is not an easy task, and proves difficult for many. Between parents, teachers, and societal expectations, sleep is oftentimes placed on the back burner.
In order to accomplish everything in one day, many students stay up studying or doing homework into the late hours of the night. The common consensus in research studies is that teenagers need between 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night to remain in optimum health. However, it is shown that over 70% of highschool students are far from this goal, averaging only 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep every night. This leads to sleep debt or sleep deprivation, something increasingly common in teens today.
Sleep debt is described as the cumulative effect of not getting enough sleep, something that is easy to fall into, but hard to reverse. For example, getting 6.5 hours of sleep instead of 8.5 hours leaves you with two hours of sleep debt. If this becomes a pattern, you would be in 14 hours of sleep debt by the end of one week. In order to recover from this, the solution is to sleep enough to make up for the missed hours, an opportunity many high school students do not receive. San Clemente High School sophomore and scholar-athlete, Emma Nelson, remarked that “getting homework in all of my classes can be really overwhelming to space out and finish, which is when I start to sleep less and less.”
Accumulation of sleep deprivation can have serious consequences for teens. In recent years, the mental health of adolescents has massively decreased. The lack of sleep is a major cause of this, leading to mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and as Nelson put it, “a bad mood that [she] can take out on others irrationally.” Not only do teens go to bed late, but many also wake up early to return back to school, decreasing sleep time even more.
Not only does sleep deprivation take a toll on mental health, but it dramatically affects physical health, especially in student athletes. Lack of sleep leads to a weaker immune system, more sickness, along with constant fatigue, and lowered performance in both sports and academics. Without the most significant recovery tool, student athtletes’ bodies will not be able to properly recover, and will eventually reach past the point of performance. Moreover, this often leads to a decrease in learning ability, with some students even struggling just to stay awake during class time. Junior Chloe Chafin noted that “Getting less sleep significantly decreases [her] attention in school and [her] dedication to sports.”
Many would argue that the solution to this is to participate in less extra curricular activities and be more efficient in homework. While for some this may be true, for others it is necessary in order to set themselves up for success in the future by creating a successful and well rounded college application. In addition to that, it is imperative that teenagers have small amounts of free time to relax and enjoy themselves, by spending time with friends or doing other things that they get to choose.
Not only is sleep necessary to maintain the wellbeing of teens, but it is essential to their ability to function on a daily basis and participate in their commitments. Rather than sleep coming in last on the priority list, it should shift to being one of if not the main focus of high school students.
Leave a Reply