Is Text Messaging Contributing To Teenage Sleep Deprivation?
Most kids go to sleep with their phone plugged in right by their heads. Every ping of an incoming message is a temptation to pick up the phone. They know talking on the phone might wake up their parents, but if they text, it probably won’t. Teens are famously sleep-deprived already, but experts say some are compounding the problem by staying up into the middle of the night to silently type messages to friends on their mobile phones. Teens need on average 9 hours sleep per night, but often only manage 7.5 hours. This leaves them with a sleep debt resulting in poor performance, moodiness and irritability. With changing biorhythms, teens do naturally stay up later — but not that late . In addition to needing more sleep, teens experience a “phase shift” during puberty, falling asleep later at night than do younger children. The brain’s circadian timing system– controlled mainly by melatonin–switches on later at night as pubertal development progresses. Later on, in middle-age, the clock
