Delayed Start is More Than Just an Opportunity to Snooze
By DANIEL SIEGEL ’22
The delayed start yesterday offered a nice reprieve for students. Many used the time to get about two extra hours of sleep, which left them feeling unusually refreshed and ready to attack the school day ahead. In fact, they may have found themselves waking up this morning still feeling the effects of yesterday’s extra sleep.
NPR notes that recently, high schools and middle schools in Seattle have been implementing later start times to address the lack of sleep in teenagers, pushing the opening of school back to 8:30 and 9:00 AM. These changes have given the students, on average, an extra 34 minutes of sleep. This increase in available time in the morning changed the average nightly sleep for a student from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes.
As the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine states, a recent set of studies performed in Rochester, Darien, Atlanta, Alberta, and Boston concluded that permanent later start times significantly benefit teens’ health and academic success. Schools with later start times had higher grades and fewer tardies, lower rates of drinking and smoking, and higher rates of participation in non-mandatory physical activity.
An article on WebMD titled “Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think” emphasised that chronic sleep deprivation affects most teenagers. In fact, studies indicate that 60-70% of American teens live with a borderline to severe sleep debt. Consequences of sleep debt include decreased performance and alertness, impaired memory and cognition, poorer quality of life, and higher rates of bodily injuries. While sleep deprivation is caused by a variety of factors, biology can play a central role; in 2004, researchers at the University of Munich conducted a study that concluded that teenagers’ circadian rhythms (the times that the body wants to wake up and fall asleep) differ significantly from the social clock, which is set by schedules and customs. This study analyzed chronotype in relation to age. Chronotype is an individual's endogenous circadian clock. In essence, chronotype is the natural inclination of a person to wake and sleep at certain times. Young children have early chronotypes; they enjoy going to bed early. According to an article from thesleepdoctor.com, an individual’s chronotype moves later and later when approaching the end of adolescence, peaking around the age of 20 (aka, you start wanting to go to bed later and wake up later). At that point, chronotype becomes progressively earlier until it eventually stops changing around the age of 75 (so you want to go to bed early and get up early). This study also concluded that there are sex differences regarding chronotypes, as men’s chronotypes tend to peak at later ages than women’s. Because our chronotypes are dictated by genetic factors, modifying chronotype is difficult.
As a way to address the preponderance of sleep deprivation among teens, schools in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and France have late starts at 9 am. Some organizations in those countries even recommend start times around 11 AM or 12 PM to help aid cognition and memory retention. However, 87% of public high schools in America still start before 8:30 AM, according a September 19 article from the Atlantic.
While yesterday’s delayed start time was a gift that many enjoyed, it’s unlikely that students will feel any notable effects on long term health and performance. The only way for us to reap such benefits, as distant as they may seem now, would be to have a permanent change in start times throughout the entire year. However, until that time comes, delayed start times serve as a nice rest for students that helps disrupt the grind of daily life.