Jakya Ellison is more aware than most 16-year-olds about establishing healthy sleep habits. She has a blue-light filter on her phone, which is designed to block the brain stimulating light wavelength after 9 p.m. She tries to put her phone away and not use it in bed, but even with the best of intentions, the draw of technology distracts her when she should be sleeping.
“I’ve been trying not to do it so much, but I get a notification and I get the nagging feeling that it could be important,” said Ellison, of White River Junction. “I have to check that and then I’m on social media scrolling.”
When it comes to the many battles between teenagers and their parents, sleep is often at the top of the list, especially with teens constantly plugged in to technology. Parents get frustrated when they wake in the middle of the night and see the tell-tale glow emanating from their child’s room long after lights-out. Teens become irritated when they’re told to go to sleep when they’re still feeling wide awake, or to hand over devices that are their lifelines to their social circles. Yet everyone is cranky when mornings devolve as tired teens who were up too late scrolling struggle to get out the door on time.
“Being sleep deprived has negative consequences in terms of mood and school performance, driving safety,” said Dr. Brooke Judd, the section chief of sleep medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Patricia Barry, the principal of Stevens High School in Claremont, agreed.
“Students more than ever are sleep deprived, especially due to cell phones,” she said. “When they come in they’re just too tired to learn.”
Although it might seem like teens are staying up late for no reason, there is a biological explanation for their night-owl behavior. Beginning in puberty, circadian rhythms — which control the body’s internal clock — begin to shift. By the high school years, teens physically don’t become sleepy until later in the night. Combined with their new drive for independence, this can lead them to stay up too late, Judd said.
Over time, this sleep deprivation can add up. Whereas most adults only need 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep each night, teens still need between 8.5 and 9.5 hours of sleep to feel fully rested, Judd said. Many teens end up sleeping fewer than the recommended number of hours because they need to rise early for school or even sports practice.
The addition of technology — particularly smartphones and tablets — has made an already fraught situation even more difficult, adding a behavioral aspect to the physiological reasons teens are going to bed late.
“They might be tired, but become very involved in using their devices, phones or the internet,” Judd said. “Then they’re more voluntarily delaying their sleep.”
Whether it’s stress from interpersonal relationships or worry about the news alerts that they see online, technology use can ramp teens up at a time when they should be unwinding.
“Anybody who is getting more emotionally activated, (will find) it harder to get to sleep in general,” Judd said.
Another important issue is the fact that the light from screens and tablets can activate the brain, delaying production of melatonin, a hormone that helps facilitate sleep. Although people have spent time unwinding in front of screens for generations, the blue light given off by LED devices suppresses melatonin more than any other type of light. The effect is even stronger when the light source is held close to your eyes, as phones and tablets often are, Judd said.
Although Americans — and teens in particular — are loathe to put down their devices, Judd said doing so is essential for establishing healthy sleep habits.
“We say try to eliminate screen use in terms of tablets, phones and other devices that are close to your eyes after 9 p.m.,” she said. “That is partially to minimize the effect that that light has on altering the circadian rhythms, but also to provide some wind-down time away from the devices.”
Judd, who has raised three teenagers, does not allow her kids to use devices in their beds.
“I feel very strongly about enforcing that it’s important to get enough sleep, which is really difficult with (modern) lifestyles,” she said.
Rather than enforcing a specific bedtime — which might be met with resistance — Judd recommends that parents keep an open dialogue with their teens about the importance of healthy sleep habits.
“A teenager naturally wants to have more control over these personal decisions, and truly may not be sleepy at (the) same time as their parents,” she said. “You can’t force someone to fall asleep, so instead of enforcing bedtime, promote the habits that will help them be able to get enough sleep.”
Ellison, the White River Junction teen, agrees.
“A lot of parents just take phones away before bed and that can work too, but it doesn’t teach (teens) the responsibility of putting the phone away,” she said. “If you teach them a couple hours before bed to put their phone down and wind down to get ready to go to sleep, that will help them understand a lot better.”
It’s a goal Ellison has started working toward, flipping her phone to “do not disturb” mode so that notifications and text alerts don’t draw her back in. But when she falters she knows she can also count on her mom to remind her of the importance of quality sleep.
“If I get out of line she’ll let me know,” Ellison said. “Phones are a big part of how we grew up, and it’s something that’s going to take a lot of learning and readjusting to not having it all the time and turning it off before bed.”