Teenage Sleep Deprivation

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.  Can you even imagine going through this kind of pain?  Well, if you are a teenager you can probably relate since about 80% of US teenagers are sleep deprived.  On average a teenager gets about 7.4 hours of sleep when they should be getting around 9.5 hours of sleep.  This is a huge problem because without sleep, our bodies can’t function properly and at such a young age, the health of the teenagers can start to be effected.

I’m sure everybody has had one of those mornings where you can just barely get out of bed.  When your alarm goes off you press snooze about a dozen times before actually getting out of bed and turning it off.  This is never a fun way to start out your day especially when you have to spend 6 hours in school.  Not being able to wake up in the morning is a sign of sleep desperation and is also a sign that your day will not be very productive.  Being in school when you are sleep deprived is very hard on your body.  You feel so much fatigue from the lack of sleep and it is hard to get from class to class without the feeling that you are going to pass out.  You also have a very hard time with concentration and memory and with test after test and project after project; they become key to succeeding in your academic life.

In today’s society, teenage obesity is a huge issue.  It may sound hard to believe, but weight gain is one of the many outcomes of sleep deprivation.  In short, sleep deprivation increases levels of a hunger hormone and decreases levels of a hormone that makes you feel full.  This means that you will feel hungry more often and it will make you eat more and more and still, you will feel less full then usual.  Teenagers start turning to junk foods instead of healthy choices because of their incessant hunger.  It is hard to eat only healthy food especially when you are constantly eating.  As teenagers get less and less sleep, sleep deprivation becomes more and more of a contributor to teenage obesity.

Another result of sleep deprivation is that you become more prone to sicknesses, from a common cold to the flu.  Being sick for one or two days can be nice because sometimes you get to miss school, but when you are constantly getting sick missing a lot of class work, it becomes a major problem.  Being one or two days behind is hard enough but being five or more days behind can start to affect your grades.  Even if you decide to go to school sick, your day would not be very productive because when you are sick your body needs to get rest and going to school would not be any help to you or your grades.

For young teenagers their social is very important to them and is most of the time, a positive influence on their lives.  It’s good to have true friends in our lives because they can always help us when we are upset and when we need a little fun in our lives.  The question is can sleep deprivation have and impact on teens social lives?  Well, the answer is yes.  The feeling of being so tired is draining, most of the time it shows on your face. It makes you look sad and irritated, and truly think about it, would you want to be friends with somebody who looks like that?  Most likely if you didn’t know them as a person, you would say no.  Most people what to friends with someone who looks lively and friendly.  Also, when you always feel fatigue, it is hard to go out with friends and so staying home seems like a better plan.  However, when people get the right amount of sleep, they feel energetic and awake which can really help with their social life and their school life.

A lot of people have some of these symptoms of sleep deprivation but don’t think anything of it; they just let themselves suffer.  As bad as all of the outcomes of sleep deprivation sound, there is a solution.  Get more sleep!  No teenager should have to live there life like this and by increasing the amount of sleep the average teenager gets, it would make school, physical activities, and the social lives of teenagers healthier and more trouble-free.  So all you teenagers out there GO TO SLEEP!