– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

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.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
sleep /sliːp/ A1	verb - to rest with your eyes closed and your mind and body not active noun - a state of rest with your eyes closed and your mind and body not active
teenagers /ˈtiːnˌeɪdʒərz/ A2	noun - people aged from 13 to 19
recommend /ˌrekəˈmɛnd/ B1	verb - to suggest that someone or something is good
doctors /ˈdɒktərz/ A2	noun - people trained in medicine
night /naɪt/ A1	noun - the period of time when it is dark
homework /ˈhoʊmˌwɜrk/ A2	noun - schoolwork that is done at home
sports /spɔrts/ A1	noun - games or activities involving physical skill
clubs /klʌbz/ A2	noun - organizations or groups of people
overwhelmed /ˌoʊvərˈwɛlmd/ B2	adjective - feeling very stressed or anxious
pressure /ˈprɛʃər/ B1	noun - stress or force from expectations
yawn /jɔn/ A2	verb - to open your mouth wide because you are tired
psychologist /saɪˈkɒlədʒɪst/ B2	noun - a person who studies the human mind and behavior
sadness /ˈsædnəs/ B1	noun - the feeling of being sad
focus /ˈfoʊkəs/ B1	verb - to pay attention to something noun - attention or concentration
mental /ˈmɛntl/ B1	adjective - relating to the mind
health /hɛlθ/ A2	noun - the state of being healthy
anxiety /æŋˈzaɪəti/ B2	noun - a feeling of worry or fear
technology /tɛkˈnɒlədʒi/ B1	noun - the use of scientific knowledge for practical purposes
brain /breɪn/ A2	noun - the organ inside the head that controls thought and feeling
depression /dɪˈprɛʃən/ B2	noun - a medical condition causing sadness and loss of interest

Key Grammar Structures

• Doctors recommend that teenagers get eight to 10 hours of sleep every night.

  ➔ Subjunctive Mood in Subordinate Clauses

  ➔ The verb "recommend" is followed by "that", which triggers the subjunctive mood for "get", even though it's not strictly formal here, reflecting advice or suggestion.

• William Brangham reports from California on why it's so hard for so many teens to sleep.

  ➔ Infinitive of Purpose

  ➔ The infinitive "to sleep" expresses the purpose of the report, functioning as an adverbial phrase after "why". It explains the reason for the difficulty.

• It'll be another long night for 15 year-old Keiko Rakin,

  ➔ Future Simple with 'Will'

  ➔ "It'll" (will) indicates a prediction or certainty about a future event, describing an ongoing or habitual situation.

• I have homework to do every night.

  ➔ Infinitive of Purpose in Active Voice

  ➔ "to do" is an infinitive phrase expressing the purpose of having homework, where the subject performs the action.

• The academic pressure, the college pressure, the sense that she's not doing enough,

  ➔ Appositive Phrases and Nominal Clauses

  ➔ This is a series of appositives explaining "the academic pressure", with a nominal clause "that she's not doing enough" acting as a noun phrase.

• According to the CDC, more than 70 percent of American teenagers aren't getting enough sleep.

  ➔ Present Progressive for Ongoing Actions

  ➔ "aren't getting" uses present continuous to describe an ongoing habit or situation, implying it's happening over time.

• When teenagers are not getting enough sleep, they are grumpier.

  ➔ Zero Conditional for General Truths

  ➔ This "when" clause expresses a general condition without "if", using present tenses for a timeless result: "are" leading to "are".

• 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.

  ➔ Second Conditional for Hypothetical Situations

  ➔ "could bottle" (past simple for hypothetical) with "would be" expresses an unreal possibility, imagining a counterfactual scenario.

• It's not their fault. It's not their choice.

  ➔ Negative Possessive Contractions

  ➔ "It's" is contraction of "it is", combined with negative possessive "their", emphasizing ownership or responsibility in negative sentences.

• And truly for all of us, this would be the most valuable drug on the market.

  ➔ Superlative Adjectives in Hypotheticals

  ➔ "the most valuable" is the superlative of "valuable", used in a hypothetical context to compare and emphasize extremity.