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More Sleep Helps Teens Lower Accident Rates
Jan 06 2009 by Jennifer Newman
We all know how much teens need their sleep; turns out, just an extra hour could help save a teen’s life.
A Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine study found that by moving school start times back an hour and giving teens a little more time to snooze, the likelihood of them getting into a car accident could be lowered. The study of 10,000 Kentucky students found a 16.5 percent drop in accident rates for teen drivers when high schools moved their start time from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. We bet a lot of teens would support similar moves in their own schools, though it would probably come more from a desire to get extra sleep than it would safety concerns. Whatever works!
More sleep leads to more alert drivers, which is true for all of us. After the dreaded puberty hits, teens’ biological clocks program them to stay up an hour or so later than they did when they were younger, researchers reported. You can’t fight nature: If teens stay up late because of a biological necessity (and a need to drive their parents nuts), this wreaks havoc on their bodies when they have to get to school by 7:30 a.m.
By moving the start of school back an hour, 50 percent of the students in the study got at least eight hours of sleep. That number was just 35.7 percent in 1998, when the schools had an earlier start time. It’s pretty amazing that such a simple idea could have such dramatic, life-saving results.
Of course, if these teens think they’re tired now, just wait until they have kids of their own (preferably once they’re well out of their teen years).
What time does school start for your teen? Is it a battle to get them out the door on time? Let us know in the comments section below.
