
Around 30 percent of children in the U.S. don't get enough sleep: study - breadandcrumbel
https://www.newsweek.com/american-kids-arent-getting-enough-sleep-its-affecting-their-success-school-scientists-warn-1466882
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MperorM
Lack of sleep was definitely the cause of my terrible grades in highschool
mathematics. I would stay up late (1-2 am) to play in starcraft tournaments,
to have 8 am classes in mathematics. (There's a neat inverse correlation
between my highschool grades and starcraft rank)

It's crazy to me just how terrible school systems are at optimizing for
learning. I would get terrible headaches from classrooms that had too many
people and too little fresh air. I thought it was just me dreading my lessons,
but in reality it was from co2 ppm reaching levels that humans can't properly
function in.

We wake up students too early, put them in rooms that kill cognitive
performance and then have the audacity to complain when they can't follow
along!

~~~
EpicEng
>We wake up students too early

I agree, but... you were staying up until 1-2am playing video games. C'mon.

~~~
zeta0134
I also stayed up until 1-2am, regularly, starting around junior high. I
performed a great many tasks, mostly teaching myself various programming
languages, always at the relative expense of my concentration in the next
day's classes. Two things were the primary motivating factors in developing
this habit:

\- My parents wouldn't leave me alone for very long in the evenings, so I felt
like I wouldn't get a chance to really concentrate until they were off to bed
\- My brain gets tired around 10pm like a normal person, but then it gets a
"second wind" and is up happily until 3-4am, with intensely increased clarity
of focus.

The first trait was obviously correctable and probably circumstantial, but the
second feels far more innate. I just focus better right after the sun goes
down, and I'm not really sure why. It's like all the stress from the day melts
away, and I get a chance to finally be myself for a few hours. So, I work an
evening shift (my work day starts at noon and gets out quite late) and I
couldn't be happier for it.

It's a shame that this combination is both common, and regarded as _lazy_ by
society at large, because it seems to be quite the opposite. I get my best
work done in the evenings, and so do lots of other people. I wish that we were
generally more accepting of these traits, because if I hadn't had the good
fortune to stumble into a job with such a well-aligned shift, I would still be
struggling to sleep properly most nights.

~~~
hwillis
> My brain gets tired around 10pm like a normal person, but then it gets a
> "second wind" and is up happily until 3-4am, with intensely increased
> clarity of focus.

Not saying this isn't your natural predisposition, but FWIW this is pretty
much exactly what happens to everyone with a disrupted sleep schedule. Or any
disrupted normal cycle, really[1]. Probably the large majority of people have
experienced this.

[1]: Fasting is one example- you will be starving by lunch or dinner, but if
you wait a few hours longer the hunger will go away pretty much entirely. You
may feel sluggish and slow when you're hungry, but once your brain realizes
you aren't going to eat you will feel lighter and more energetic. If your body
needs to go past its normal cycles, your brain will give you the resources to
do so. The hunger and tiredness you feel normally are more like periodic
maintenance reminders.

~~~
zeta0134
In high school, this is probably what it was. My body wanted to fall asleep
well after hours due to timing but I still had to get up at 7am for school.
Being shorted on sleep _sucks._

My current adult strategy is to simply plan for 7.5 hours of sleep each night;
this gets me well rested consistently and doesn't appear to have any negative
side effects. So long as I get the sleep in at some point, it doesn't seem to
matter all that much when in the day it is. I could shift to mornings (and
worked retail this way for years), but it's harder to maintain; 2am just feels
"normal" to me. So, given the choice, I'll start the day later and wake up
rested.

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yellow_postit
_Why We Sleep_ [1] is a pretty complete look at what we know about sleep today
and implies that many of the things I thought like being able to catch up on
sleep is just wrong. Did confirm my belief that there are some people that
just can operate on less, but they are fewer than might be imagined.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-
sleep](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep)

------
astura
Kids need a more sleep than adults, sometimes a _lot_ more sleep. I don't
think adults realize this sometimes, and kids can silently suffer as a result
(and not even really understand they are suffering).

It absolutely amazes me when I see young children out and about late at night
because I had a very strict early bedtime as a child - 8pm early in life, 9pm
starting my tween years. It was very much to my disdain at the time, but now I
strongly believe being well rested served me well in all aspects of my life.

~~~
baron816
Falling asleep that early is unnatural and very difficult at that age. I
recall many nights trying to go to sleep early and lying in bed, stressing
about not being able to sleep (making it even harder to sleep).

~~~
matwood
I had the same routine and was fine. I think having a consistent sleep routine
is key.

What makes it unnatural? If you want to appeal to nature, how about turn off
all the electricity in your house and see how late kids stay up with just a
fire going.

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jdlyga
Especially high school students. We had to get up at 5:55 am everyday in the
early 2000s, with class starting promptly at 7:35 am. It definitely affected
our attention span for the first few classes each day. I count my blessings
that nowadays, my first real meeting at work doesn't start until 10:30 am.

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AmVess
A co-author of the study recommends establishing regular bedtime routines.

I wager the lack of a regular routine is the source of the problem. The school
I went to had split shifts. I was on the early shift, and had to be up at 5AM.
It wasn't a big deal because I had to be in bed by 9PM or it was my ass.

Perhaps kids would get more sleep if their parents had rules and enforced
them.

~~~
bigred100
Some parents actively prevent their children from sleeping enough. Eg your
brother will bother us if you don’t let him play on his computer in your
shared bedroom until 3am and we are too tired to deal with it, so figure it
out yourself.

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sjg007
Adolescents are natural night owls. It's probably in our genetics.

~~~
masonic

      It's probably in our genetics
    

It's never been reported in pre-industrial societies or even presently in
areas where artificial light well into the night is uncommon.

~~~
sl1ck731
There have been quite a few studies popping up recently regarding this and
there does appear to be genetic mutations that account for being a "night
owl".

[https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/the-genetics-of-
be...](https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/the-genetics-of-being-a-
morning-person/)

DSPD is also seen far more frequently in adolescents.

------
planetzero
I really don't think it has anything to do with the hours. Children/teenagers
will try to get away with as much as they can. It's more about being
rebellious.

My elementary, high school, and middle school all started at different times
(and my senior year of high school started much later because I completed
enough credits).

Regardless of how late school started, I would just stay up later, the later
school started. I usually got around 6 hours of sleep/night and would be very
tired during the day. I now know that I need at least 7 hours to be
functional.

Now I do think everyone has a different level of sleep they can function on,
but the time a person goes to bed has little to do with it.

This is just another excuse that today's parents are giving because they don't
want to take screens away or discipline their children.

~~~
jjeaff
"Research to date has shown that the circadian rhythms of adolescents are
simply fundamentally different from those of adults and children,"

"All of the studies of adolescent sleep patterns in the United States are
showing that the time at which teens generally fall asleep is biologically
determined -- but the time at which they wake up is socially determined,"

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212140741.htm)

~~~
umvi
Does that mean timezones and daylight savings disrupt teenage sleep patterns
and that they are unable to adapt?

Should we abolish timezones and daylight savings as to not interfere with the
immutable teenage sleeping patterns?

~~~
jjeaff
Yes, on the first one.

On timezones, doesn't matter. On daylight savings time, absolutely, though not
necessarily just for teenagers but because daylight savings is idiotic and is
of no benefit to 99% of the population.

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lsh123
My kids play hockey and if they don’t _ask me_ to go to bed by 9pm then they
need a little more practice next time ;)

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natmaka
Another cause is believing that, in order to compensate for too-short a night,
one only has to sleep more the next day, or even afterwards. AFAIK this is
false, sleep doesn't work this way and we all have to sleep adequately each
and every day.

------
frankieta
Lately I'm trying to avoid being a "night owl" because I think it's affecting
my short but also long term memory. I can't often remember things that I deem
simple, like, "who's the lead singer of a band that I love" or I can have a
more than normal difficult to remember the name of a colleague.

Or maybe it's my brain developing some Alzheimer like disease.

I'm 36

------
SimeVidas
In college, I remember just dropping on my bed on Fridays at 5 PM and sleeping
for a couple of hours. It’s not that I was overworked, I just didn’t take care
to get enough sleep during the week.

------
known
Time to revise
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum)

------
Amygaz
There’s a bell curve here. 1/3 in high school, 2/3 in college, 1/3 in the
adult workforce (CDC data).

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subsaharancoder
Long story short, parents need to consistently enforce strong rules regarding
lights out time at an early age and eliminate excessive external stimuli as
the day winds down. This idea that teenagers who can't make responsible
choices are left to define their sleep time as well as other rules borders on
child abuse.

------
aussiegreenie
I would estimate that most Asian children do not get enough sleep.

------
flerchin
Everyone, not just kids. Go the fuck to bed. In my experience, it's the same
parents that struggle to make it to 930 standups that also let their kids stay
up too late.

~~~
epicureanideal
There’s no reason a standup needs to be at 930 other than to punish people
with later natural sleep cycles.

~~~
thrower123
I don't much like standups, but I've noticed that they tend to end up being a
hard start to the day. When we had them at 9:30, people would tend to always
get in to the office by at least 9:15. When we kick them back to 10:30, people
tend to straggle in up to 10, 10:15. Generally, people adjust to whatever the
time is, so they have some minutes to get settled and triage their email; you
usually can't actually get anything done unless you come in a couple hours
before in the morning, and trying to start anything and pause for the meeting
is a mess, because of the risk of getting diverted onto something else as a
result of the standup.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
As one of those people, it's because, as a developer, I hate knowing I'm going
to be interrupted in X amount of time. Obviously if it was something like 11,
1130, it'd be different. But if with no standup I'd get to the office at 915,
but the standup is at 10, I don't think I'd get any valuable piece of work
done in that 45 minutes.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I always used that time to clear my inbox and read the internet. Get those
early distractions out of the way.

