Lost Z’s: High school students battle sleep deprivation

We’ve all been there before. It’s 10:30 on a Tuesday night and you’ve still got to work on your human geography assignment, art project, and have about thirty other things to do before you can go to bed, just to wake up tomorrow and start the whole school day over again. Although, something you might not even realize that can make the school day seem even longer is the amount of sleep you’ve gotten the night before. According to a study cited by the CDC in 2015, less than 30% of American High Schoolers get 8 hours of sleep on school nights, and with how early students can have to wake up for school nowadays, this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

I recently ran a survey of Westside students wanting to find out the average number of hours students slept each night, and the results were fascinating to say the least. When asked how many hours of sleep students thought they got on average, a staggering 45.2% of students said that they got between 4-6 hours of sleep on a typical school night, with 48.8% of students saying that they got between 7-10 hours per night. To put this in perspective, the CDC’s recommended amount of sleep for high school students is a minimum of 8 hours per night, something that almost 50% of Westside’s students say they don’t come anywhere close to. With the amount of pressure that comes with high school, staying up late to finish homework might seem necessary to get good grades, but according to the CDC it might actually be detrimental to your academics. According to a survey conducted by the CDC in 2012, they state that “Insufficient sleep is common among high school students and is [very often] associated [with]…poor academic performance.”

When asked if they thought their sleep schedule was consistent each night, 35.7% of Westside students responded by saying that their “sleep schedule was based on the amount of  homework [they] had” and 29.8% said that they “didn’t have a consistent schedule each night”, with only 34.5% of students saying they go to bed at the same time each night.

So, what is a Westside student able to do to get some extra z’s? According to a researcher for the CDC, Dr Anne Wheaton, the best way to maximize getting a good night’s sleep is to have a consistent sleep schedule. Wheaton says that it is important to avoid doing stimulating activities on the brain before sleeping, such as watching TV or reading a book, and that going to bed at the same time each night helps to get your body into a sleep schedule that can help with falling asleep. So put your phones away, stop stressing out, and good night, Westside. Sleep deprivation is nothing to snooze on.