Got a sulky teenager? Let them have a lie-in: An extra hour in bed makes them ‘less likely to feel nervous, tense and worry about exams’
- The University of Minnesota study was based on more than 2,100 children
- Body clocks are thrown off by having to get up too early in the mornings
- Getting more sleep could potentially enhance mental wellbeing, experts said
If you have a sulky teenager at home, the answer might be to allow them a lie-in.
Teenagers are less likely to feel unhappy and worry if they get just an hour more sleep in the morning.
An extra hour in bed makes adolescents 25 per cent less likely to feel very nervous and tense and about a third less likely to worry about things, a study has found.
It cuts their chances of often feeling unhappy, sad or depressed by eight per cent and reduces the odds of frequently feeling hopeless about the future.
The research, based on more than 2,100 schoolchildren, concludes that teenagers’ body clocks are thrown off by having to get up too early in the mornings, which may be bad for emotion regulation in the brain.
Teenagers are less likely to feel unhappy and worry if they get just an hour more sleep in the morning, according to research
The authors, led by Dr Aaron Berger at the University of Minnesota, state: ‘Although we know that adolescents require eight to 10 hours of sleep for optimal functioning, very few teens are able to get this much sleep on school nights.
‘Improving sleep duration could potentially enhance mental wellbeing. Given that short sleep duration among adolescents is a population-wide issue, a public health approach is needed.’
The NHS recommends that teenagers get nine hours of sleep a night, but teenagers’ sleeping patterns shift later than those of young children and they are night owls at this age.
Researchers say many teenagers struggle to fall asleep before 11pm or to wake before 8am, so that they suffer permanent ‘jetlag’.
The effect of this on the brain may affect other mental processes, like keeping negative emotions in check.
The study is based on questionnaires asking 2,133 young people when they went to bed and woke up on a typical week day.
The same children were also asked how often they suffered six depressive symptoms.
The results, published in the journal Sleep Health, show teenagers were 32 per cent less likely to often worry if they were allowed to sleep an hour later in the morning.
They were 10 per cent less likely to often feel hopeless about the future, and saw a reduction in five out of six depressive symptoms.
A lie-in only appeared not to help with motivation, as it left teenagers more often saying they were too tired to do activities.
The findings mirror those of a similar study on more than 9,000 teenagers done by the same researchers in 2017, which also found children felt better after sleeping later and for longer.
A lack of sleep has also been found to lower adolescents’ self-esteem and give them a more negative outlook on life.
Dr Berger said: ‘Teens not only get less sleep as they get older, but they are also getting less sleep now than they were 20 years ago.
‘Without support from schools and families, it may be difficult for teenagers to get the sleep they need for healthy emotional and physical development.
‘Many studies have shown that starting schools later is a very effective way to allow teenagers to sleep longer.’