“In fact only about 8 percent of American teenagers get the sleep they need.” (Garey 1). Many reasons come into play with teenagers not getting enough sleep. With too much homework, extra curricular events, and other dangers to sleep students start to struggle, but all it takes is a couple solutions. Lets start with the main problems first. Most teens have at least one extracurricular activity, as it helps with your college resume. With this can come a great reward with a great risk. After teens are able to get home their start time can be stunted from one to three hours.This leads to a problem similar to Katrina’s, she was volunteering in her town and working 13 hours a week leaving her with four to five hours of sleep. Then they have to be at school early in the morning, but according to Dr. Van Gilder, “Multiple studies have shown that high school students aren’t functional before 9 a.m.” Parents have been and still are fighting to push back these extremely early starting times. They have stated that …show more content…
While you may think that caffeine is your solution to staying up late and finishing your homework, you don’t think about the side effects. When teens stay up all night drinking coffee or Mountain Dew while working on writing a paper on their laptop they are killing their sleep. The laptop screen or any electronic screen has an emission light called “blue light”. The blue light sends a frequency to the receptors in your eyes telling your brain to stay awake. Next, the low amounts of melatonin (a hormone in your body that helps you sleep) in an adolescent, moves their bedtimes back 30-60 minutes, effecting their sleep schedule. Lastly with teens in after school activities rest can become very difficult. When you get home, you try to do homework before any exercise, but exercising three or less hours before sleep can cause your body to stay awake longer. Don’t worry these problems can be