Students Being Deprived of Sleep and Why That’s an Issue

With the world getting more advanced and high paying jobs requiring big degrees from top colleges, students are forced to push harder and take rigorous classes, all while maintaining their extra curricular activities and volunteering that will help them on their applications. But to do this, something needs to be sacrificed: Sleep.

As a junior in high school, I’m currently going through what some may call “hell year.” While the work does get tougher and having to worry about standardized testing, the biggest problem I encounter is my lack of sleep.

And it’s not just me that struggles with this.

Students all over the US, especially in the Silicon Valley, does not get the recommended sleep amount that many doctors advocate for. According to many credible sources, teenagers (Usually ages 12–17) should get around 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. In fact, a study showed that only 15% of TEENAGERS (Not just high school students) get that much sleep.

Doctors say that sleep deprivation can lead to:

• Lack of concentration/focus leading to sleeping in class and bad test scores
• Aggressive behavior which can result in severe consequences
• Unhealthy diet leading to health problems early on
• Drowsy Driving which causes many teen-driver accidents

But let’s put education to good use and do some math here to really see if students are in fact, actually busy. School counselors state that AP Classes normally requires around 2 hours of homework every night. In a competitive school like where I attend, students are taking anywhere from 3–5, AP courses in their junior year alone! By taking 3 AP courses (I currently am), that alone is already 6 hours of homework EVERY NIGHT. A normal school day is normally around 7 hours. Ok, that still allows 11 hours of “free time” where students can sleep, right?

Wrong.

Again, getting into a top college today in such a competitive environment requires a student to do above and beyond just school. Many people I know do sports after school. Depending on what sport you play, practices are everyday during the season and can last anywhere from 2 to even 5 hours (Even more if there is a game that day!). Let’s just say that sports are 3 hour practices every afternoon. That leaves students 9 hours of “free time.” BUT WAIT! What about those other “miscellaneous” things such as outside of school extra curricular like students who do music? What about dinner time? And what about the homework from the OTHER classes not AP? What about that SAT studying or studying in general for a test coming up? All of those things added up take a huge chunk of time from the day. Saying that miscellaneous activities take about 4 hours in total, a student’s day is left with 5 hours left in their 24 hour day. At this point, the majority of students are too tired to actually relax and do something they want or like to do. Most choose to use the remaining 5 hours to sleep and wake up to start the cycle all over again.

My school starts at 7:35 AM everyday except for Wednesday when we start at 9:10 AM. It’s a huge struggle for me to wake up at 6:45 to take a shower, get dressed, and eat a healthy breakfast which is also recommended by doctors. However, there are MANY students that do not even get to eat a healthy breakfast like I do because they wake up late and have to go immediately to school.

Many people may argue that it’s our fault that we choose to take that many classes and do all those extra things. But is it really? In such a competitive society and by being around hard working people, it’s almost required to do all those things to be “on-par” with everyone else. Because nowadays there are so many other students that have the same exact perfect GPA and perfect SAT scores, colleges require you to be unique and stand out WHILE maintaining those grades. The problem is, how do you fit everything with only 24 hours in a day?

The sad answer that students adopt today is to eliminate sleep and suffer the consequences.