Why Aren’t High School Students Sleeping Enough?

Asking someone ‘How are you?’ leads to common responses like ‘Good’, ‘Fine’ and ‘I’ve been better.’

But among high school students, these responses are often substituted with ‘I’m tired.’

“I don’t think anybody here thinks they get enough sleep,” said sophomore Mike Byrnes.

Byrnes then called out to a group of students sitting in the hallway, asking if they thought they regularly get enough sleep.

He was answered with a chorus of “no”s.

According to Byrnes, the workload from classes and time commitment to activities like theater leave him without enough time to get to sleep at a reasonable time.

If so many students are concerned by their lack of sleep, why is it such a universal experience?

Senior Tessa Becerra said a lack of sleep is often seen as a necessary evil.

“People in high school just accept it as something that is necessary to being successful,” said Becerra. “Sometimes sacrificing some hours of sleep is worth the better grade and extra studying.”

However, high school culture was not always like this.

“When I was in high school, you had maybe one or two extracurriculars,” said social studies teacher James Campbell. “I did theater, stopped and then did band. The number of AP classes is kind of like an arms race, which didn’t exist when I was in high school.”

Campbell said this is testament to how overcommitted students of today are and, combined with too much time on technology, leads to sleep deprivation.

Some students feel an intense need to get into certain colleges, and thus, fill their schedules to make their resumes as impressive as possible.

“College-level classes are difficult for high schoolers. The workload on multiple is a lot, combined with extracurriculars, combined with not having meaningful and refreshing interactions with human beings, combined with many students still having weekend or summer jobs,” said Campbell.

“It’s a lot, but I think it’s particularly bad for high school students because you don’t think about it, but you’re still physically and mentally developing.”

But with the increasingly high achievements of students as a whole, competition to get into colleges becomes more stiff.

“Kids are doing activities and classes because they feel like they have to, not because they love them, and that’s sad,” said Campbell. “And, they’re not getting the advantage that they would’ve in the past. They’re just on par.”

With so much focus on staying competitive, some students disregard attending to themselves.

“I think students should be fully committed to themselves developing,” said Campbell. “While I was in high school I took time to figure out who I am and what I like. Learning how to be a person can be very hard when you’re at practice til midnight.”

Some adults suggest if students are unable to get a full eight hours of sleep, they may want to drop some of their activities and free up their schedules. It can be hard to choose only certain extracurriculars, but being too busy only adds to the stress of high school.

“Staying healthy will be more important to you than one more AP class and one more extracurricular,” said Campbell. “I’ve worked in lots of education. I’ve seen how the story ends more so than students have who are in the middle of it. They think, ‘If I don’t do this, life ends.’ That is so not the case. Few things will totally derail your future.