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January 2005
Middle Schoolers Are Not Bad Kids-They’re Just
Overtired
Young adolescents (between 6th and 8th grade)
develop significant changes in sleep patterns, sleeping less as
they finish middle school. Researchers followed 2,259 students
from 23 middle schools and found a correlation between
insufficient sleep and poor grades, as well as insufficient
sleep and depressive symptoms concurrent with low self-esteem. |
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Adolescents need more sleep than younger
children, but many factors interfere, including part-time jobs,
homework, video games, and talking to friends on the computer.
Circadian rhythms become more established at this age, as do
morning or evening personalities, which are dictated by an
internal bodily clock.
Insufficient sleep has been shown to compromise learning,
memory, attention, and abstract thinking skills In addition,
insufficient sleep results in an increased risk for school
absences because of physical illness, falling asleep in school,
oversleeping in the morning, fatigue, and irritability, all of
which are detrimental to academic outcomes.
Methods
From 1995 to 1997, data were drawn from a longitudinal
assessment of adolescents in Illinois schools who were from
geographically, socio-economically, and racially diverse
backgrounds. The students were followed from 6th through 8th
grades. This study focused on self-reported data of students who
completed a survey each year.
The students were eleven to fourteen years old. Half the sample
was male, and the majority considered themselves European
Americans-82.2%. The rest were Hispanic-6.9%, African
American-5.4%, Asian American-3.4%, multiracial- 1.8%, and
Native American-0.3%.
Students completed a lengthy survey, which took about two hours
to fill out. Teachers read the questions as students read along.
These same students took similar surveys each year. The surveys
asked about the average amount of sleep the student received per
night, the average grades the student earned, and used questions
taken from the Children’s Depressive Inventory. (CDI), the most
frequently used scale to assess depressive symptomatology in
children.
Results
Findings showed that the less hours of sleep a student got in
eighth grade, the more likely the student would have depressive
symptoms; and the more sleep, the more self-esteem the student
would have. Students who got more sleep reported slightly higher
grades. Another discovery involved the role of sex as a
predictor. At the beginning of middle school, girls obtained
more sleep than boys. One explanation for this difference may be
the earlier onset of puberty for girls, which corresponds with a
heightened need for sleep. By eighth grade, both boys and girls
were getting little sleep, and their grades and self-images,
already suffering in adolescence, were suffering further.
Conclusions
In light of this study, the researchers recommend parents and
teachers improve the quality of life for adolescents and reduce
their risk to a range of negative health, academic, and
emotional outcomes by considering the importance of a good
night’s sleep. Parents should encourage lighter homework loads,
and later school start times. Allow adolescents to go to bed and
wake up at times that are more suited to their bodily rhythms.
Finally, continued longitudinal studies to understand the
implications of adolescent sleep loss should continue, to find
ways to counteract the detrimental effects of lack of sleep.
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