Why Later Chronotypes Can Be an Academic Barrier - The Atlantic

8/11/16, 12(14 pm

Why Morning People Thrive

Some neuroscientists are trying to change school
and work hours that discriminate against night
owls.
Conor Friedersdorf
Social jet lag was described by chronobiologists (those who study the
brains time-keeping mechanisms) at University of Munich in 2006 as
misalignment of biological and social time.
That could mean, for example, that when the world is saying its time for
bed, youre not tired. When the world is saying its time for work, youre
sure you need more sleep. A growing number of experts believe that this
phenomenon is real, common, and beyond our controland that the
health consequences are serious.
Among them is Judith Owens, a Harvard faculty neurologist and director
of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Boston Childrens Hospital.
She believes that morning people need to do more to recognize and respect
the biology of non-morning peoplewho may simply not be built to
operate on traditional schedules.
This week in the medical journal Pediatrics, Owens and colleagues found
that even among people who sleep the same number of hours, there are
behavioral, emotional, and cognitive differences between people who are
night owls and people who are morning larks. This is what she and
some sleep experts have lately begun calling a persons chronotype: the
idea that people are programmed or wired to sleep later or earlier in
any 24-hour period.
But society does not always abide, insisting that people simply go to sleep
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/if-your-child-is-terrible-blame-his-chronotype/506372/

Page 1 of 5

Why Later Chronotypes Can Be an Academic Barrier - The Atlantic

8/11/16, 12(14 pm

earlier, and that as long as you get seven hours of sleep or so, you should
be fine.
If your sleep patterns are misaligned with your internal circadian
rhythms, Owens told me, then thats going to have a more important
impact on self-regulation than how much sleep you actually get at night.
In the latest research, her team studied high-school and middle-school
students in Fairfax County, in Virginia, where the first bell rang at 7:20
a.m. The researchers compared thousands of students, some who were
morning people and some who were night people. The results showed that
even when everyone got the same amount of sleep, self-regulation was
worse among night people.
Self-regulation is a psychological construct that comes up a lot in health
research. Its absence has been associated with a host of negative outcomes,
like substance abuse and depression. Owens explained to me that there are
three types of self-regulation: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. In each
of these domains, a person can have stability and control (or at least a
sense of control). All three can be lost or improved throughout life, but
theyre largely shaped by our environments and behaviors during younger
years.
Her takeaway: Its not just how much you sleep, its when you sleep.
The research shows a correlation between chronotype and self-regulation,
so which element might be causing the otherif the two are indeed related
cant be said. But taken together with other research on night people and
morning people, chronotypes do seem to have serious implications for
health and wellbeingin that they influence our standing in societies.
Mismatches with people and systems around us can influence educational
attainment and, thus, financial and social stability. So in a world that tends
to reward and praise morning people, Owens is interested in mitigating
systems that discriminate against people of the night.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/if-your-child-is-terrible-blame-his-chronotype/506372/

Page 2 of 5

Why Later Chronotypes Can Be an Academic Barrier - The Atlantic

8/11/16, 12(14 pm

For example, as NPRs Morning Edition reported on Wednesday on this

research, a 17-year-old named Zachary Lane has four alarm clocks and still
regularly gets detention for being tardy. Even when he does make it to
school on time, hes groggy. I feel kind of like Im lagging behind myself,
he said. I don't feel totally there.
That sounds like a serious sleep disorder. Four alarm clocks is too many.
Owens says that kids like Lane suffer as a result of a system they cant
control. Academic difficulty can set off a cascade of low confidence, further
lack of self-regulation, health problems, and on and on. All from something
that wasnt the night childs fault to begin with.
These kids simply cannot fall asleep much before 11:00 at night, she told
me. Thats the way their circadian rhythms are wired. They need eight to
10 hours of sleep. So, you can do the math.
(I can and did. I asked her how the night teens in her study were getting as
much sleep as the morning teens if the school started at 7:20. She said,
We controlled for all these variables.)
The point, Owens emphasizes is that many kids are biologically
programmed to wake up around 8:00 or 9:00. By that point, theyve been
in school for two hours. Thats where this brings up the issue of school start
times.
In 2014, she was the lead author of a statement by the American Academy
of Pediatrics that implored high schools and middle schools to start no
earlier than 8:30.
Part of the reason behind that was to make sure kids get enough sleep,
she told me. But it was also to align their school schedules with their
biological rhythms.
So these research findings support her mission nicely.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/if-your-child-is-terrible-blame-his-chronotype/506372/

Page 3 of 5

Why Later Chronotypes Can Be an Academic Barrier - The Atlantic

8/11/16, 12(14 pm

Since that recommendation, many schools have pushed back their start
time. She travels the country giving talks about this: This isnt just about
school performance; its about the health of our kids.
I dont know which most parents care about most. But this point, why
wouldnt all schools just change their start times?
Oh! she said with a gasp. There are myriad reasons! Honestly, the
biggest one is sports. Practice will be delayed. If youre playing a team from
another district with an earlier start time, that gets screwed up. Some
teachers have second jobs and need to get out there. And people like the
status quo. Change is hard.
I told Owens I was on the swim team in high school. We had two practices
a day, and the first started at 5:30 in the morning. I said I wonder if I
would be smarter now if I hadnt done that.
She withheld judgment. Its crazy.
After Owens completed the research in Virginia, she was involved in
getting the school system to change its start timewhich is now 8:10. Shes
in the process of studying how that change is going.
But what if Im a parent with a child whose school starts early, I asked her,
and this kid seems to be a night child, what can I do besides lobby the
school to adapt to my night child?
At this point, she said that chronotypes are at least somewhat malleable, a
sort of Hobbesian understanding of our agency in sleep. She recommends
keeping kids off screens when bedtime is nearing. She also recommends
not letting your teenager sleep in on weekends. (A super easy and fun thing
for a parent.) That has been shown to delay their circadian rhythms even
further, she said, creating social jet lag.
In his book Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/if-your-child-is-terrible-blame-his-chronotype/506372/

Page 4 of 5

Why Later Chronotypes Can Be an Academic Barrier - The Atlantic

8/11/16, 12(14 pm

So Tired, chronobiologist Till Roenneberg painted a more daunting

picture. He posited evolutionary explanations for modern chronotypes, like
that morning people had an advantage in agrarian societies. He went on to
tie chronotypes to why birth rates vary with time of year, and even why
older men often marry younger women.
Even for someone who doesnt believe in free will, this often starts to feel
too deterministic for me. No doubt there are chronotypes, and the
construct is useful to consider. But Im not sure that chronotypes are
inescapable. Im not convinced that going to sleep earlier or later than the
people around you is the result of some innate neurological destiny, some
ordained truth about your bodys relationship to sunrise and sunset.
When you go to sleep (and when you wake up) relative to the people
around you seems to be a result of myriad lifestyle decisions and
environmental factors. When New Yorkers move to Hong Kong, for
example, they dont live forever nocturnally. If the effect of daylight is the
basis of the cycle, then explain seasonality. Sunset in New York is four
hours earlier in December than it is in July, but we still go to sleep around
the same time. Seeing ones chronotype as a complex network of factors,
many of which are malleable, seems to me more intellectually valid and
more empowering.
Theres also hope in noting that the final element of Owenss study was
this: Students who described themselves as sleepy at school but werent
actually sleep-deprived ended up scoring just as poorly on self-regulation
as people who were actually sleep deprived. Writing oneself off as not a
morning person could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/if-your-child-is-terrible-blame-his-chronotype/506372/

Page 5 of 5