RIIINNGGG!! It's 7 a.m and Siddhartha Oza, a student at Palo Alto High School, sluggishly reaches for the snooze button. Oza is desperate for five minutes' more sleep having been up past midnight doing math homework, studying for tests in physics and Spanish, and preparing for a mock trial competition later in the week.
He's exhausted.
All across America, teenagers are repeating this scenario, not getting the proper amount of sleep. The average teenager requires nine or more hours of sleep each night, but most get far less, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Only 20 percent of all adolescents get the recommended nine hours of sleep on school nights, and 45 percent of adolescents get less than eight hours on school nights.
Among those adolescents who report feeling unhappy, tense and nervous, 73 percent said they don't get enough sleep at night and 28 percent said they feel too tired to exercise, according to a poll from the sleep foundation.
"This poll identifies a serious reduction in adolescents' sleep," Richard L. Gelula, the foundation's chief executive officer, said in a statement released in March with the 2006 Sleep in America report. "This is particularly troubling as adolescence is a critical period of development and growth -- academically, emotionally and physically."
As teenagers undergo physical changes, sleep patterns change, too. The body's "biological clock" shifts so that teenagers fall asleep later and wake up later. Also, high school is a time when students develop more of a social life and therefore stay out later. This normal development collides with classes for some students that begin as early as 7:30 a.m.
"Kids are not getting the full benefit of school when they are sleep deprived," said Dr. Rafael Pelayo, an assistant professor at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Center.
Sleep is supposed to be when the body recuperates. It is also when the body develops, and this is especially important to teenagers because their bodies develop so rapidly.
"I would never do well on the tests anyways, since I was tired because I didn't get enough sleep the night or morning before," Oza said. "I simply didn't learn anything after my brain shut down at 1 in the morning. I would continue to "study" until 2 or 3, but I wouldn't really learn anything.
"In my opinion, sleep deprivation is truly one of the most pressing teenage issues today. I, myself, consistently went to sleep after 1 or 2 in the morning throughout my junior year of high school simply because I needed the time to study for tests or finish my homework."
Sleep deprivation may also result in irritability, slurred speech, memory lapses and overall confusion. Many of these symptoms are similar to those of a person who is drunk or high on drugs. These impairments of judgment can have serious and, in some cases, fatal consequences. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsiness and fatigue cause more than 100,000 traffic accidents each year, and younger drivers are at the wheel in more than half of these accidents.
Insufficient sleep also has been shown to cause problems in school because students find it more difficult to concentrate.
"Sending students to school without enough sleep is like sending them to school without breakfast," Dr. Jodi Mindell, the associate director of the Sleep Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Associated Press recently. "Sleep serves not only a restorative function for adolescents' bodies and brains, but it also is a key time when they process what they've learned during the day."
Teachers, too, are noticing the effects sleep deprivation on their students.
"A lot of the students seem tired during class," said Tyler Hansborough, a teacher at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. "It can affect their participation, which is important in a language class. The amount of work they have is really demanding, especially at a school like Bellarmine."
Some people have suggested later start times for school as a potential solution to easing sleep deprivation. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, lawmakers are considering bills that would prohibit public schools from starting before 8:30 a.m. In Minneapolis, the starting time for school was changed from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 a.m., and research showed that Minneapolis students went to sleep at almost the same time that they did before the time switch. This means that students slept almost an hour and a half more because they were getting up later.
Developing better sleep patterns can also help teenagers cope with sleep deprivation. Strategies include:
1. Avoid heavy studying or video games, which can be stimulating, before sleep.
2. Avoid sleeping while a computer or TV in the room is left on.
3. Don't sleep more than two or three hours beyond your usual wake-up time because it will disrupt your body's clock. Binge sleeping is seldom a good idea, because lost sleep is not something that can be made up on weekends.
4. Maintain a consistent sleeping pattern.
5. Be more efficient with time and cut down on procrastination. Wasted time needlessly contributes to later nights for increasingly stressed teenagers.
"Looking back on it, sleeping late or simply not getting enough sleep is a terrible idea," Oza said.