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Comment by toasterlovin | Hacker News Reader

I have a longstanding hunch that the whole “teenagers need more sleep” thing is greatly exaggerated and it’s just that teens just stay up too late because they’re extreme stimulation seekers. Phones have made things worse, but we’ve had TVs, etc for a long time.

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Teenagers do need more sleep. They also naturally tend toward later hours. This phenomenon even extends to similar developmental phases in some other species.

That said, the availability of artificial lighting, then the availability of TV, and now the availability of phones have made the problem exponentially worse by removing the natural boundaries that bracket out daytime hours.

I have friends and family who are teachers. As they tell, there’s an obvious bimodal distribution where some kids are going to bed at reasonable times and others are bragging about staying up to completely unreasonable hours. It’s a badge of honor for some to barely sleep at night.

Like most things it comes down to parental involvement. The gulf between students whose parents care and those who let their children do whatever they want is massive.

Yeah, but kids in general need more sleep. Are teenagers peculiar among other age groups? My hunch is that they’re not with respect to how much sleep they need, but are with respect to how much sleep they get.

Man, if my body was changing again so much that I was getting stretch marks, growing a few inches a quarter, and (for some) putting on 5s and 10s of pounds of muscle, fat, and bone, I'd imagine my metabolism would need sleep as well.

Its having to get up before noon thats the true problem, they just live in a different timezone

I always laughed at the supposed benefit from moving high school start times an hour later with the claim that teens need more sleep. They'd need to move it three or four hours later; getting up at 8:00 instead of 7:00 is not a big difference when your body wants you to sleep for another three or four hours.

Was that based on anything? An hour of sleep is a big benefit. You’ll feel a big difference if you give yourself six instead of five hours of sleep, or seven instead of six. Sleeping too late in the day isn’t as high quality; sleep until 7am still is for most people. Students stay up late, but many aren’t regularly staying up past 12. Plus, we do have to compromise with teachers who’d like to have dinner.

I had a counselor or whatever once tell me I needed to “become” a morning person

Now I’m 40 and I still am more functional after 10am than any time before that. And I’ve worked jobs starting at 4am-6am for months but never quite got used to it

Yep 4am—1pm was my sleep schedule when I was in high school outside of school. During school it was 1am—5am during the winter due to sports conditioning and 1am-6:00am spring/fall. That was the earliest I could push my bedtime and still fall asleep.

I used to fall asleep standing in the shower. Do not miss it in the slightest. Every day is a good day to not be in high school.

Teenage dogs need more sleep, too. I think it’s a bit of both.

It’s well documented that need for sleep continuously declines with age. However what you are saying is likely also true, which combine to make kids really sleep deprived.

Until what age?

I've always seemed to need a lot of sleep. I'm a night-owl.

For about 1 month, a few years back, I suddenly started waking up early, like 6am (in Winter). Had a couple of hours before anyone else was up. It was great. I didn't plan it, it just happened. And as easily as it arrived, it departed. I've tried to forcibly repeat it, but I just wake and feel awful, am super sleepy and get nothing done.

Wish there were a switch.

I can go to bed at 8pm, get 12 hours of sleep and still feel awful in the morning.

I'm middle-aged, fwiw.

Peoples sleep duration on average gradually and steadily declines from as much as 11-19 hours as an infant, down to 5-8 on average for 65+. There is no rapid sudden drop, and possibly no age where it stops going down either.

However, peoples individual need for sleep varies substantially on top of that, and can go up or down based on a lot of other factors. Medications, mental health, sleep apnea, diet, exercise, etc. can influence your need for sleep and how restful the sleep you get is.

If you're sleeping 12 hours and still feeling awful, there is likely something very wrong you need to look into. I'd go to a doctor and get a sleep study, but if nothing else you can get a logging pulse oximeter, and/or sleep tracker like an Oura ring. It is possible you are not really sleeping but having short waking events, and/or apnea events from sleep apnea that is keeping your sleep from being restful.

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