Surrounded by the bookshelves of Monta Vista High School’s spacious library, Stanford University’s Kate Kaplan, Ph.D., put to rest several notions teens have about sleep, including the idea that a minimal amount suffices and that constantly shifting waking and bedtime hours has no effect.
And she did it with a means parents may actually be able to use with quick-to-debate teens: scientific data.
Close to 50 parents listened attentively as Kaplan, a fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, spoke on a recent evening about the importance of sleep, the physiology of sleep and what to do to encourage teen sleep.
Kaplan began by acknowledging that sleep is one of many things competing for teens’ time. “I do understand that sleep does not [exist] in a vacuum,” she said. “There’s a context for it.”
Kaplan’s presentation included a fast-paced overview of some sleep physiology tenets. She said that in a typical night, a person will cycle multiple times through stages of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM), non-REM stage 1, non-REM stage 2 and non-REM stage 3. Researchers believe that each of these stages serve different purposes, including dreaming, mood regulation, critical motor learning, growth and repair, and memory.
The skilled sleep researcher managed to toss out concepts like homeostatic drive, the circadian system and the suprachiasmatic nucleus and still keep the audience on the edge of its seat. Kaplan compared the homeostatic drive to hunger: The longer we go without sleep, the higher the drive.
“We need a certain amount of that pressure to fall asleep and stay asleep during the night,” she said. The circadian system is our biological clock, regulating the timing of periods of wakefulness and sleepiness during the day, and is affected by light.
Kaplan then surveyed the group, asking parents and kids in the room, by a show of hands, to give her typical wake-up and bedtimes during the week, then on the weekends.
“We have a tremendous amount of variability,” said Kaplan, drawing a comparison to taking a flight across the country every week. The researchers call it “jet-lag phenomenon.” “How many teens have trouble falling asleep on Sunday nights?” she asked. “Your body has adapted to a new time zone.”
Kaplan next addressed hours of sleep, and cited a study in which sixth- through 12-graders were interviewed; the average night’s sleep for the sixth-graders was 8.4 hours, compared to 6.9 hours for the 12th-graders.
“We’ve lost an hour and a half in bedtime from sixth to 12th grade,” said Kaplan, then asking the parents, “Why?”
Parent answers included less parental monitoring, heavier homework load, increased activities (social, extracurricular, employment) and technology. “There’s so much competing for an adolescent’s time,” Kaplan said.
In addition, there are biological factors. Kaplan said the onset of puberty triggers a preference for “eveningness.”
“Are teens sleep deprived?” Kaplan asked. “The answer is yes,” adding that the need for sleep remains constant, about nine hours per night.
Why does it matter? For one, sleep facilitates development of the frontal cortex, which regulates inhibition, planning and impulse control. Sleep also helps with mood regulation, motor development, growth and repair, and ingraining material into memory, which, for one example, would be beneficial in schoolwork.
Sleep-deprived teens report being tired during the day, falling asleep during school or while doing homework, needing to consume caffeine and having less self-esteem and more depressive symptoms. They are also more likely to have lower grades and to engage in risky behavior.
How to convince a teen to get more sleep? Kaplan recommends finding what’s important to them–athletics, academics, attractiveness–and then showing them real-life examples of how more sleep improves that area. For example, if attractiveness is important, show them pictures of themselves with and without adequate sleep.
“You make sleep relevant,” she said.
The Stanford University School of Medicine is looking for teens ages 14-18 who report trouble going to sleep or waking up to participate in its ongoing teen sleep study. For more information, contact the study coordinator at meital@stanford.edu.
