Tweens Need Sleep!

A study released today by the non-profit National Sleep Foundation finds that:

• "1 in 10 kids are being awoken by texts after they have gone to bed." (for the latest stats on tweens and mobile phones, see our post here)
• "Kids today are getting an hour and a half to two hours less sleep per night than they did a century ago. That means that they are losing about 50 hours of sleep per month."
• "Sleep experts recommend that teenagers get 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep a night but adolescents in the study were only averaging 7 hours and 26 minutes on weeknights."

Dr. Charles Czeisler, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, commented on the report and said, "I am the most concerned about how little sleep 13-18 years are getting."

Sleep experts recommend turning off electronics well before bedtime because exposure to the artificial light (of electronics) before going to bed "can increase alertness and suppress the release of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone." Dr. Czeisler says, "Parents should get these technologies out of the bedrooms of kids if they want them to do well (in school)."

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