The Science of Adolescent Sleep

Why do children wake up early when they are young but want to stay in bed till
noon as teenagers?

Experts say it’s biology. Adolescents’ bodies want to stay up late and sleep late,
putting them out of sync with what their school schedules demand of them. So kids
have trouble waking up, and they often find themselves feeling drowsy in morning
algebra class.

But that chronic sleepiness can affect their health and well-being, their behavior,
and even their safety; it becomes genuinely dangerous when sleepy teenagers get
behind the wheel.

At a recent conference on adolescent sleep, health and school start times, at which I
gave a brief keynote, several experts made compelling arguments supporting the
idea that middle and high school start times should shift to 8:30 a.m. or later, as
recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy
of Sleep Medicine.

The argument is that teenagers who face very early school start times are at risk of
regular sleep deprivation. Driving after sleeping only four to five hours a night is
associated with a similar crash risk as driving with an alcohol level at the legal
limit. Sleeping less than four hours puts you at the same risk as driving with double
the legal alcohol limit. (This is not only true for adolescents, but for all of us.)

Drowsy driving may not be the only risk that tired teenagers take. Wendy Troxel, a
clinical psychologist and senior behavioral and social scientist at RAND, talked
about the “adolescent health paradox,” that teenagers, who are in a developmental
period of physical strength and resilience, face disproportionately high mortality
rates. Unintentional injury (especially car crashes) is high on the list of causes,
followed by homicide and suicide.

“The onset of new cases of depression skyrockets when kids become teens,” Dr.
Troxel said. And we spend a great deal of time, money and energy on programs to
prevent adolescent violence and suicide, to counsel against substance abuse and
unsafe sex — and not always successfully. Given the vulnerability, and the dramatic
changes happening with development, researchers are looking for other ways to
support adolescent brains and general well-being. “Sleep loss problems are linked
with brain areas that control emotional processes and risk taking,” she said. “Sleep
problems and behavioral and mental health problems are linked.” (She recently
gave a TED talk on why school should start later for teens.)

Dr. Daniel Buysse, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Pittsburgh

Medical Center and the author of a 2014 article on sleep health, spoke about what
regulates sleep. There’s a sleep drive that builds up according to how long you’ve
been awake, he said, and then dissipates as you sleep. Your 24-hour rhythm and
your level of arousal and engagement from moment to moment also regulate sleep.

“How are these things affected in adolescents?” he asked. Their sleep drive takes
longer to build up than it did in childhood, he said. “They don’t reach that critical
level of sleepiness till a later time at night.”

A student who could handle elementary school starting at 9 a.m. may have to
contend with middle school starting at 8 a.m. just as social demands and his or her
own sleep cycle shift later, putting development, biology, social connections and
academic expectations into conflict.

The brain needs sleep to replenish energy sources, said Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, a
professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Sleep is critical to
maintain focus and alertness, to repair and maintain brain cells, to clear out toxic
metabolites,” he said.

Dr. Mary Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Alpert

Medical School of Brown University, spoke about the variety of developmental
alterations that take place in adolescence, from changes in the brain to different
patterns in metabolism, and the ways that sleep patterns are affected. Those same
children who were once eager early risers, she said, begin staying up later and
become, as many parents know, hard to rouse in the morning.

And when they do wake up and get to school, their brain function is not at its best.
Amy R. Wolfson, a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Maryland, and
the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Sleep and
Behavior, said that high school students tend to perform better in courses that
meet later in the day, and perform better on cognitive tests when they are given in
the afternoon.

The adolescent response to chronic sleep loss may be to consume a great deal of
caffeine, Dr. Troxel said, leading to a “tired but wired” state in which risk-taking
becomes more likely, in a setting where adolescent biology is in conflict with
academic expectations and school schedules.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/well/family/the-science-of-adolescent-sleep.html
Economy & Business; The Teenage Market:
Young, Hip and Looking for a Bargain
By JENNIFER BAYOT

AH, the teenager: grown up enough to work part time, but not too old for birthday
money or that weekly allowance.

Altogether, the country's 32 million teenagers have $94.7 billion at their disposal,
says Harris Interactive, the market research firm that conducts the Harris Poll.

Their own spending power makes teenagers a lucrative market. Factor in the jeans
and video games bought by doting grandparents, or the laptops and DVD players
that they recommend to aunts and uncles, and teenagers' contributions to
consumer spending multiply.

And like the typical consumer who has been resilient in the face of a sluggish
economy, teenagers are learning to become smart shoppers and make their dollars
go further. Teenagers' awakening to discount chains, in fact, is ''the biggest shift
going on in the teen space right now,'' said Lauren Cooks Levitan, a retail analyst
with SG Cowen.

Still, teenagers do not respond to economic factors nearly as much as older

consumers do, she said. ''And the reason is that their disposable income equals
their spendable income.''

In other words, teenagers with money in their pockets typically can buy whatever
they want, which Ms. Levitan says tends to be clothes, consumer electronics and
entertainment. Although some parents may require children to save a certain
amount of their money, few teenagers have to worry about utility bills or mortgage
payments.

Certainly teenagers have been facing some economic pressures. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics says that the percentage of teenagers employed this year is the
lowest since 1963-64. Also, the average weekly paycheck of a working teenager has
fallen 15 percent since 1998, to $90.90 a week, according to Mediamark Research,
a New York firm owned by United Business Media. The average allowance,
meanwhile, has grown only 9 percent, to $26.70 a week from $24.50 in 1998.

But shopping still comes with being a teenager. ''We all love shopping,'' says
Shikisha Stoute, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Jersey City. ''It gives you time to
spend with your friends and hang out. And I think it's part of growing up.''

Just last year, Shikisha said, she wore clothes that her parents or her aunt picked
out and bought for her; now she saves her money to buy her own outfits. She says
that she and her friends can now go to the mall without a chaperone, and they even
buy makeup once in a while. They have also stopped frequenting the Limited Too in
favor of Old Navy, ''where we can get stuff our age.'' Shikisha adds that they tend to
look for bargains over brands: ''We'll try to get the nicest things out of the money
we have.''

Retail analysts say that many teenagers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars.
For instance, Harris Interactive found that teenagers increasingly prefer to buy
tickets to movies instead of theme parks, and jeans instead of sneakers. Student
Monitor, a Ridgewood, N.J., company that studies college undergraduates, learned
in a recent survey that a third of college freshmen and sophomores had visited a
discount department store in the previous week, while only a fifth had visited
specialty stores like Abercrombie & Fitch or the Gap.

''In college, you realize how much money you're spending on clothes when you
could spend it on going out,'' said Anish Gala, a 19-year-old sophomore at the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Having to pay for necessities like books
and groceries also inspires strategic spending, he said. ''You kind of realize it
doesn't really matter about the name brand. I like the TJ Maxx-type stores. Brand
names for less.''

In addition to becoming thriftier shoppers, teenagers are gaining influence on what

their families buy. After surveying upward of 500 households last fall, Yankelovich,
a marketing research firm in Norwalk, Conn., found that more than half of
teenagers had helped their parents choose a family vacation spot, a 24 percent
increase from a decade ago. Similarly, one in four teenagers had a say in what type
of car to buy, up from one in six, and 43 percent helped pick out a television, VCR
or DVD player, up from 12 percent in the period 10 years ago. ''It really speaks to
kids' being increasingly involved in significant household decisions,'' said Kristen
Harmeling, a partner at Yankelovich.

Yankelovich also found that many parents relied on their teenagers to shop or at
least browse for them on the Web. About 65 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds and 45
percent of 12- to 14-year-olds say their parents ask them to research products or
services online. Those percentages respectively represent increases of 27 percent
and 13 percent from just two years ago.

Michael, the ninth-grader from Granger, Ind., did some comparison shopping
online for his father last year. ''It just snows and snows here,'' Michael says. ''My
dad said, 'If you don't like shoveling, you can shop online for a snowblower.''' His
father eventually bought a $600 model that Michael chose on the Web.

As teenagers help their parents pick out purchases, their own buying habits are
becoming more mature. Irma Zandl, a trend analyst and president of the Zandl
Group in New York, said the 3,000 teenagers in her advisory group expected their
peers to buy new fixtures and furniture to redecorate their rooms and more
embellishments for their cars.

And while they will keep on buying DVD's and video games, teenagers are also
saving for camera phones and the Nokia N-Gage, a combined cellphone and game
system that sells for $200. Ms. Zandl said that many teenagers were even looking
at plasma televisions, which often cost thousands of dollars.

With jobs scarce over the last few years, teenagers have held off on some big-ticket
items, Ms. Zandl said. ''But now,'' she added, ''we're starting to see a lot of pent-up
energy for spending.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/01/news/economy-business-the-teenage-market-
young-hip-and-looking-for-a-bargain.html