School Start Times for Adolescents

Abstract

The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes insufficient sleep in adolescents as an important public health issue that significantly affects the health and safety, as well as the academic success, of our nation's middle and high school students. Although a number of factors, including biological changes in sleep associated with puberty, lifestyle choices, and academic demands, negatively affect middle and high school students' ability to obtain sufficient sleep, the evidence strongly implicates earlier school start times (ie, before 8:30 am) as a key modifiable contributor to insufficient sleep, as well as circadian rhythm disruption, in this population. Furthermore, a substantial body of research has now demonstrated that delaying school start times is an effective countermeasure to chronic sleep loss and has a wide range of potential benefits to students with regard to physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports the efforts of school districts to optimize sleep in students and urges high schools and middle schools to aim for start times that allow students the opportunity to achieve optimal levels of sleep (8.5-9.5 hours) and to improve physical (eg, reduced obesity risk) and mental (eg, lower rates of depression) health, safety (eg, drowsy driving crashes), academic performance, and quality of life.

Sleep Duration and Injury-Related Risk Behaviors Among High School Students — United States, 2007–2013

“…Early school start times contribute to insufficient sleep among adolescents. Delaying school start times has been proposed as a means of allowing adolescents to get adequate sleep (9). Some students naturally need more sleep than their peers, but waking up and feeling unrested in spite of adequate sleep might be an indication of a problem such as poor sleep quality or an underlying health condition.…”

“…html). Some evidence exists that health care providers, in collaboration with health educators, might be able to change adolescent injury-related behavior through screening and brief counseling, followed by a visit by a health educator (9,10). Information for parents of teen drivers on what they can do to encourage safe driving by their teens is available at http://www.cdc.gov/parentsarethekey/parents/index.html.…”

Stress, Sleep, and Performance on Standardized Tests: Understudied Pathways to the Achievement Gap

“…The consequence of insufficient sleep-more fatigue, sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating (Alapin et al, 2000;Baum et al, 2014)-can affect students' ability to learn and their ability to perform during a test. Fatigued students may take fewer notes during learning or skip more questions on the test, although we know of no studies that have studied this.…”

Eating breakfast together as a family: mealtime experiences and associations with dietary intake among adolescents in rural Minnesota, USA

“…Prior population-based research has similarly reported the perception of being too busy in the morning to eat a healthy breakfast is common among adolescents (41, 42) . Although the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that schools aim to start no earlier than 8:30 am in the morning, a 2011-2012 national survey found this was the case in only 14.4% of high schools (43, 44) . Family breakfast frequency was not related to the measure of household food security included in the current study but insecure access to affordable, healthy food may be yet another barrier for health professionals to address in promoting shared meals (45, 46) .…”