Adolescents also require more sleep than adults or children due to their physical and mental growth. They require 9.5 hours of sleep on a daily basis when most of America's youth only get an average of 6 hours on a school night. This means that they lose roughly 17 hours of sleep in a school week.
Sleep deprivation can affect how well students do in school. A school started at 7:15 in the morning and so the students fell asleep in class. However, when it was changed to 8:40 in the morning instead, grades got better, less tardiness, less absent students, less sleeping in class, the students also participated more. That means because the students got more sleep, their school performance got better. A medic says that, "a lack of sleep can affect listening, concentration, learning, and problem solving abilities." That means because they did not get enough sleep, it messed up their learning abilities required in school to learn.
Lack of sleep affects the immune system. Many studies have shown that T-cells (which fight off infections) go down if we are sleep deprived. That means we are more likely to get colds and the flu. Studies have also shown that people who sleep less are actually more likely than people with the required amount of sleep to die from all causes. That means the less you sleep the more likely you are to die, from anything.
Sleep deprivation affects emotions. Lack of sleep decreases one's ability to control their emotions, leading to being easily irritated, saddened and frustrated. This means you cannot control how you feel when tired. A study where a group of 26 healthy adults, half slept normally and the other half were kept up for 35 hours, were showed pictures consisting of many things, results showed that the group that were awake for 35 hours had a bigger emotional reaction opposed to the group that slept normally. That means sleep deprived people cannot control their emotions as well as they could if they slept more.
Insufficient sleep causes car accidents. Most people think that drowsiness is the first step to falling asleep, when in reality, it is the last. Many people driving feel drowsy and because they do not realize what it means, it ends up leading to car accidents and sometimes death. In Lexington, Kentucky, when school officials decided to push back the starting time of middle school and high school by an hour, two things happened: the students reported getting more sleep, and traffic accidents involving teenagers went down. That means because the students got more sleep, they got into less driving accidents because they were not feeling tired or drowsy.
Serious issues occur when adolescents are not getting enough sleep. Issues include many things, ranging from emotions to grades, to the immune system and a simple cold to car accidents and deaths. This is why I think that the time high school starts is unreasonable.
