Adolescents are asleep
We are mistreating adolescents. They sleep badly, they are asleep, and this bad rest is a true reflection of our society and our (bad, very bad) habits.
Our schedules -whether work, school, family or leisure- are totally incompatible with a good rest, and it is no excuse to say that everyone sleeps badly.
Adolescence is a time that requires a great energetic demand for the brain. The great changes that its structure will undergo, as well as the changes in mental processes, require a high consumption of energy and an effective rest time for everything to be successfully completed.
During the first years of childhood, the size of the brain increases progressively, especially due to the formation of new circuits that will store new skills as they are acquired. Once adolescence is reached, the brain size increases much less, since new circuits are hardly created, but the existing ones are remodeled, strengthening the most used ones and those that are less eliminated in the synaptic pruning.
The creation of new synapses and the modification of existing ones last a lifetime. A new job, a new house, a new relationship… Any new activity requires the readjustment of what we have already learned in order to adapt to the new reality.
The fact is that the experiences and things learned modify the structure of the brain, and it is precisely during sleep that these synapses are consolidated. However, not just any sleep will do, as it must be effective and of adequate duration. However, the key is the REM (rapid eye movement) phase.
REM sleep and age
During sleep, the brain changes its activity, so that conscious interaction with the environment ceases to be a priority and is devoted to other tasks, such as the “repair and maintenance” of the organism.
This is reflected in the electrical brain activity, which is very different than during the rest of the day.
As far as sleep is concerned, different phases can be distinguished, ranging from light sleep – phase I – to deep sleep – phase IV – ending with the REM sleep phase. These phases are organized and change during the course of a single night.
In an adult person, each sleep cycle takes approximately 90-110 minutes to complete and is repeated several times during the night. However, although in the first half of the night the periods of deep sleep are long and REM sleep short, in the second part of the night exactly the opposite happens, so that in the first hours of the night there is a predominance of non-REM sleep and in the second part of the night REM sleep.
In the case of children, the structure is quite similar, although the duration of sleep, the total number of cycles and their duration change with age.
However, in the case of newborn sleep, the majority of REM cycles occur in the second part of the night, during the first three to four hours barely reaching the REM phase, and then barely leaving it.
Although there is still much to discover and learn about sleep, there is growing evidence that REM sleep is basic and fundamental to consolidate learning.
Fewer hours of sleep reduces REM sleep and hinders the ability to learn.
The adolescent’s floor and its relationship with society
Therefore, for sleep to be restorative and effective in consolidating learning, it is necessary to sleep about eight hours a night. In the case of adolescents, they should sleep more, about ten hours, since their energy expenditure is higher and their brain undergoes a greater number of changes.
However, this is not the only difference between the sleep of an adolescent and that of a child or an adult. Because of the high hormonal activity to which the adolescent brain is subjected, sleep is not achieved until late in the morning. Thus, most adolescents are night owls who prefer to go to sleep after midnight. This is not a whim, but biology.
And how does society treat teenagers? Because nighttime rest is not taken care of, and this ends up directly influencing learning.
Teenagers should sleep about ten hours a day, more than what we were originally told. If they get up at seven o’clock to go to school around eight o’clock, they should go to bed at the latest at nine o’clock at night, and at the latest at ten o’clock if they get up at eight o’clock because they go to class at nine o’clock. If the school day, extracurricular activities or homework are counted, dinner time is quickly reached, which in this ideal schedule would be around eight o’clock in the evening, and then they should go to bed. This is as far as we can take the theory, although the reality is different.
And this reality tells us that most teenagers do not eat dinner before nine or ten o’clock at night and that they do not go to bed until at least eleven o’clock at night. They watch TV or use social networks after dinner. When else would they do it? They are teenagers, and they need to entertain and socialize.
Besides, since the hormone release doesn’t occur until that time, they don’t fall asleep until after midnight. So, when morning comes, there is no one to get them out of bed. This is normal, since their organism needs many hours of sleep and with luck they sleep seven hours. If they extend it a little longer, they leave home without breakfast or without taking a shower, or without both.
Thus, the adolescent goes to school in “bad conditions”, without rest, without breakfast and in many occasions somewhat disheveled and angry, since a low glucose level together with drowsiness causes irritability. In addition, of what they had studied the day before “little has remained”, since they have not completed all the hours of REM sleep necessary to fix learning. As a conclusion, it generates difficulties in concentration, school failure… A disaster.
Am I exaggerating? No. If you have teenage children, you already know it, and if not, there are multiple researches that corroborate it. The solution seems obvious and simple: delay the school start time.
It may not be possible to fight against nature, but it is possible to change schedules to improve both the health and the future of our children. For more information, consult a Neuropediatrician.