Sleep Every Night Has Significantly Decreased For Teens

How much sleep is your teenager really getting?

A new study conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that the amount of sleep teens have received over the last 20 years seems to be declining.

More specifically, researchers found that those who get the least amount of sleep are female students, racial/ethnic minorities, and students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

"This finding implies that minority and low socioeconomic status adolescents are less accurately judging the adequacy of the sleep they are getting," said Katherine W. Keyes, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and lead study author, in a news release. 

For the study, researchers examined sleep trends by age and time period for U.S. teens, with more than 270,000 students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades. All were required to answer a nationally representative survey from 1991 to 2012 while reporting on how much they slept per night. Similarly, students were required to reveal if they got at least seven hours of sleep every day.

Fifteen-year-olds were likely to get the least amount of sleep. For instance, in 1991, just about 72 percent reported regularly getting seven-plus hours of sleep a night. However, by 2012, this had decreased to 63 percent.

The largest declines for adolescents occurred between 1991 and 1995 and 1996 and 2000.

Though researchers are still uncertain of the underlying reasons for sleep decreases, the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommends that teens get about nine hours of sleep a night.

"Declines in self-reported adolescent sleep across the last 20 years are concerning and suggest that there is potentially a significant public health concern that warrants health education and literacy approaches."

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Pediatrics.

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