A Major Reason Why Teens Don't Get Proper Sleep

Something every living organism needs to survive, including humans. To many, a good night’s sleep means after coming home after a hard day’s work or school, taking a hot shower and throwing on pajamas and crashing in their comfy bed. But, if you’re anything like me, you’ll do your nightly routine, close your eyes, and half an hour later you’re still tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. Then you may try grabbing a book (or scrolling through Instagram or Tik Tok for another half hour) and still it’ll take another half hour to finally rest your eyes, but then morning comes in what feels like minutes and you start off the day groggy, sluggish, tired, and wishing you could get back and close your eyes for another hour.

This is usually how my daily routine goes, and as well as most Americans, high school students in particular. According to the CDC, 1 in 3 Americans don’t get enough sleep. That’s over 100 million people that feel like they can’t obtain the right amount of sleep they need to function properly throughout their day.

Why? Why does something so simple as sleep, something that’s built into the genetics of every single living creature, miss so many people?

One huge reason many teenagers are staying awake long before their bedtimes is because of their phones, or gaming devices. Not in the way that you may think either. Staying up late staring at your phone’s bright screen can upset your body’s natural circadian rhythm. What this is is your body’s internal process of regulating your body’s sleep and wake cycle, and is primarily effected by exposure to light. Throughout the day, you’ll most likely see the sun and be outside for a good amount of time. This will let your circadian rhythm know that it is daytime, and holds back on melatonin. (the chemical that is responsible for making you sleepy) As the day gets later and darker and you’re exposed to less sunlight, this signals your circadian rhythm to increase melatonin levels in your body to make you feel tired, and sleepier. Melatonin also helps in keeping you asleep longer, for the entire night. However, when staying up late and staring at bright screens, this tells your circadian rhythm that it is still daytime, decreasing your melatonin levels, thus preventing you from being able to fall asleep and sleep harder.

This is a problem for many teenagers in this age of addictive social medias, and it can be hard to put down the phone an hour away from bedtime. One simple solution is to simply not to look at screens an hour before bedtime. The National Sleep Foundation even says that putting screen away half an hour from bedtime can drastically improve REM sleep, the deepest part of sleep that repairs brain functions, increases muscle growth, and is essential to a good night’s rest. If putting screens away for good before bedtime, then a good alternative is to activate a dark theme, or Night Mode on your phone. This will reduce the amount of harsh blue light emitting from your phone’s screen and help to regulate your circadian rhythm.

Sleep is a complex subject that has confused scientists ever since it was first studied. It’s something that is very inconvenient; wasting away hours on end every day to end up waking as tired as you were before. But day by day, you can change your sleep habits, utilizing those 8 hours to their fullest and using it to revitalize your mind and increase your energy, and even mood throughout the day. All it takes is to put down the screens just a little before closing your eyes. Why not start today?