Study: Teens May Need Less Sleep Than Previously Thought
Older teenagers can function well with as little as seven hours of sleep, a new study has found. From MSNBC.com:
National guidelines recommend at least eight hours of serious snooze time a night for young people. But that’s an unrealistic goal for adolescents, who are overloaded with homework, extracurricular activities and part-time jobs, experts say. Or who feel the need to stay up late texting friends or updating Facebook.
In fact, if standardized test performance is any indication, 16-year-olds score best with about seven hours of sleep a night, surprising new research finds.
Brigham Young University economists Eric Eide and Mark Showalter — who are also dads — used a nationally representative sample of 1,724 students, comparing children’s and teens’ standardized test scores with the amount of sleep they reported.
For older teens, seven hours a night was plenty. The optimal amount of sleep for 12-year-olds was higher, about eight hours, while 10-year-olds did best with about nine hours. The report appears in the current issue of the Eastern Economics Journal.
Image: Sleeping teenage boy, via Shutterstock.
Categories: Child Health, Must Read, Trends | Tags: sleep, teen health, teenagers, teens
