By
Viewed
115,891
Please choose the correct answer for each question below:
Questions: 0/122
Correct: 0
Translate:
GEOFF BENNETT: Doctors recommend that teenagers
get eight to 10 hours of sleep every night,
but many are sleeping far less than that, and
nearly one in four also suffers from insomnia.
William Brangham reports from California on
why it's so hard for so many teens to sleep,
and how it's taking a toll on their mental health.
It's part of our ongoing series Early
Warnings: America's Youth Mental Health Crisis.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It'll be another
long night for 15 year-old Keiko Rakin,
as she prepares for another day of
high school in Alhambra, California.
KEIKO RAKIN, High School Student: I have homework
to due every night. I usually have two tests a
week. I'm in sports and, that's every day after
school for two hours. I'm in five clubs. And...
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Five clubs?
KEIKO RAKIN: Five, and I have leadership
positions in all of them. And I can get
overwhelmed. You know, I can cry. I have a
hard time breathing. And it's just me thinking,
I have so much to do and I just
don't have the time to do it.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The academic pressure,
the college pressure, the sense that she's
not doing enough, it's turned Keiko into
a night owl. Most nights, this high-school
sophomore says she goes to bed around 1:00
a.m. and only sleeps five or six hours.
Does that feel like enough sleep for you?
KEIKO RAKIN: No, because it's really
hard for me to get up. And the whole day,
I'm constantly yawning. And I feel
like I can fall asleep in class.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Keiko is not alone.
According to the CDC, more than 70 percent of
American teenagers aren't getting enough sleep.
LISA DAMOUR, Author, "The Emotional Lives of
Teenagers": There's no question in my mind
that teenagers' sleep is less than it's ever
been and probably worse than it's ever been.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Lisa Damour is a
clinical psychologist in Shaker Heights,
Ohio and the author of "The
Emotional Lives of Teenagers."
While there are multiple factors causing 40
percent of high-school students to report having
persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness,
Damour says sleep is a major culprit.
LISA DAMOUR: When teenagers are not getting
enough sleep, they are grumpier. They have a
harder time focusing. They have a harder time
remembering things. They're more likely to
have accidents. They like themselves
less. They like other people less.
The bottom line on this is that if we
could bottle what sleep does for teenagers
and truly for all of us, this would be
the most valuable drug on the market.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So just imagine devising this
experiment. Researchers make their subjects
wake up hours before their normal wakeup time.
Then you force them to perform complex mental
tasks for five days straight. That's basically
describing the average teenager's school week.
Before the pandemic hit, the average
public high school start time across
the nation was 8:00 a.m. Last
year, California became the first
state in the nation to mandate that
classes begin no earlier than 8:30.
Well, that's a welcome change for many,
it hasn't changed much for Gabby Wong.
She's a junior at Mark Keppel High
in California's San Gabriel Valley.
GABBY WONG, High School Student: Sleeping
is just so -- it's a victorious feeling,
almost, because it's like, I
finally get to have enough sleep.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As co-captain
of the school's debate team...
GABBY WONG: You can have an
adequate amount of speech time,
and so that the judges see that you're up here.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: ... one of
her many extracurriculars,
her school day starts at 7:30 a.m.
GABBY WONG: You know, I get nightmares so
frequently, like, anxiety-riddled nightmares.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's the beginning of
a grueling schedule that often keeps her
up past midnight, something
she admits has taken a toll.
GABBY WONG: I have suffered with mental
health issues since I was 11. But every
night before I go to sleep, I just stare
at the ceiling and I think, what have I
not done? What assignment have I not finished?
What extracurricular activities are coming up?
And you're thinking, I am not having
an easy time with this. Why am I the
only one struggling with this? But
everybody is struggling with it.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Gabby told us her sleep is
often fluctuating. She sleeps between three
and seven hours a night during the week,
but up to 12 hours a night on the weekend.
GABBY WONG: I still wake up feeling
tired every day, no matter what.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Are your
parents on you about this?
GABBY WONG: Yes. My parents have cut --
my Wi-Fi is off by 12:00 a.m., because
they're so concerned about me not sleeping.
But the thing is, that concern develops,
and then it ends up with me being anxious
about not finishing certain things by 12:00.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Every student we spoke with said
this wasn't a result of parental pressure. They
said these intense schedules and expectations
were just part of being a teenager today.
Another major impediment to teenage sleep,
technology. Roughly nine out of
10 teens say they have access to
smartphones or laptop computers. And nearly
half say they are online almost constantly.
LISA DAMOUR: There are plenty of teenagers
who are losing sleep because they have
their technology in their rooms, because
they are on their phones late at night,
because social media is so hard to pull away from.
So there's definitely reason to
think that using smartphones,
and especially at night, has something
to do with sleep loss in teenagers.
ADRIANA GALVAN, UCLA Center for the Developing
Adolescent: The brain parts that are lit up,
so to speak, are showing us variations among
adolescents who get better or worse sleep.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: At UCLA's Center
for the Developing Adolescent,
neuroscientist Adriana Galvan
and developmental psychologist
Andrew Fuligni are studying the links
between sleep and teenage mental health.
ADRIANA GALVAN: It's a chicken-or-egg problem. Is
it that the mental health concerns or issues cause
poor sleep, or is it the other way around? And
they're related. It almost doesn't really matter.
But we know that people who suffer from, for
example, anxiety or depression, which are the most
common mental health challenges that adolescents
may undergo, are associated with poorer sleep.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Fuligni and Galvan
have found that students who perform
well in school academically often sleep less,
and are more likely to face mental health
issues compared to their well-rested peers.
But, even more alarmingly, other research
has found that students who sleep less than
six hours a night are three times as likely
to consider or attempt suicide compared to
students who sleep eight hours. This all
comes at a time when teenagers experience
a natural shift in their circadian rhythm
that begins to push them to stay up later.
ANDREW FULIGNI, UCLA Center for the
Developing Adolescent: It's not their
fault. It's not their choice.
ADRIANA GALVAN: Yes.
ANDREW FULIGNI: It's what the biology
is telling them to do. So they have
to go to bed later. And then we're
actually many times asking them to
go to school earlier and actually loading
on the academic demands in the evening.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So what should
parents do who are trying to help
their teens get more sleep? Experts say
their behavior is just as important.
ANDREW FULIGNI: It's not necessarily
you're going to be on them all the time
and harassing them to go to bed,
but have an agreed-upon pattern,
and that -- and times that you're going to
go to sleep. That's reasonable for teenagers.
ADRIANA GALVAN: We're in a society
where Americans do not prioritize
sleep. It's not just the adolescents who
are doing this. All of us stay up late to
get a little bit more work done or to go
work out or get up early to go workout.
All of that is passed on to what our
kids see and model their behavior after.
GABBY WONG: You have any ideas for, like, what the
middle event should be, like in between those two?
GEOFF BENNETT: Gabby told us she's
committed to trying to get more sleep
going forward. She also co-founded a
mental health nonprofit that aims to
reach even younger students
in the San Gabriel Valley.
GABBY WONG: We would talk about how depressed
we were, and a lot of adults would think you're
only in like, what, fourth grade, fifth
grade? But that was how we were feeling.
And nobody validated that, because they
didn't expect it. And so seeing that,
I don't want someone in the shadows to
be going through that without anybody,
frankly, to step in and look at that and
say, I see you. What you're feeling is
valid. Just because you're young, it
doesn't mean you can't feel that way.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For Keiko Rakin, she
also hopes her school will create an
anonymous tip line for students to talk to other
students about their mental health challenges.
KEIKO RAKIN: Teenagers, as a whole, we have
those points where we go into these dark places,
that we can't eat, we can't sleep, we can't focus.
And I have been there a couple of times,
but I think that just talking to someone,
if it's alone -- like, you're alone that
night, and you just really need someone,
that just having that connection, whether
it's done in person or not, could really help.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It would be much-needed help
that hopefully leads to some much-needed sleep.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William
Brangham in Alhambra, California.
Related Songs