What is the lullaby of Ridge High students? Is it the scratch of pencil on paper, or the click of a mouse while perusing Facebook? Is it the rustling of textbook pages and the sighs of resignation, or are the nightlights of Ridge High students on the screens of their phones?
It’s no secret that sleep deprivation is common among Ridge students, but it is a topic rarely discussed and often skirted around in forums where it matters. So, I polled 50 students, of different grade levels, genders, and course loads, about their sleeping habits. The majority of this sample of the student population, 21 students, said that they get around six and a half hours of sleep on average. 15 students fell within the one to six hour range, and 14 students reported getting an average of seven or more hours of sleep a night.
What does this mean? It means that students are not getting enough sleep to function correctly. The lead author of the Journal of Sleep Research, Kathryn Orzech, says research shows that teenagers need at least nine and a half hours of sleep in order to function and grow properly. Yet, teens on average get around seven and half hours a night. Studies from the Journal of Psychiatric Research have found that those who are sleep deprived at a young age are two times more likely to have suicidal thoughts in the future, 2.8 times more likely to binge drink in the future, and tend to develop anxiety disorders later on in their lives. Lack of sleep is no small matter.
Sleep deprivation makes high school a vicious cycle: students stay up late in order to finish their studying and homework, foregoing sleep for the sake of grades. This makes it harder to learn; even if a student manages to remain attentive in class, fatigue makes it more difficult to absorb what is being taught. After school, students who play sports or engage in other extracurricular activities use up even more of their energy. Then, when a student is finally home, he struggles to finish his work while running on the little sleep he got the night before. Bedtime comes later, and then the incessant sound of an alarm clock pierces through the drowsy fog of morning and begins another cycle and another long day.
But in this technologically reliant society, some cite social media as a cause of less sleep. When asked what keeps him up some nights, junior Daniel Lee admitted that the temptation of social media gets the better of him sometimes, confessing, “I was actually on the internet last night.”
Most students, however, find the social media theory to be a gross misconception. For example, one student, sophomore Krista Webster, disagrees with the assumption that students refuse to go to bed early because they are staying up on social networking sites. Krista says she finds this particularly frustrating because most students she know stay up late doing work, not spending time on social networks. “I just don’t like it when people assume we get less sleep because we choose to waste our time,” Webster states. “That’s not it at all, we just have to finish the work that we’re given. We deserve credit for doing that. I mean, I’m sure some people do waste their time, but I think that the majority of people don’t.”
Of the 36 students polled who say they get less than six and a half hours of sleep on average, most are involved in extracurricular activities and take honors classes. This begs the nagging question that everyone wants to ignore: why not drop the extracurricular activities, if sleep is so hard to come by and yet so important?
Caitlin Murray, a sophomore who is new to Ridge High school, said that on average, she gets seven and a half hours of sleep. “Sometimes I get more, sometimes I get less,” she says. “But I take sleep very seriously. If I don’t get enough, I don’t function. It’s also my fault because I choose to do extracurriculars, but I love to do it and it makes me a happier person.” This message is echoed throughout Ridge High School. Being engaged in something other than schoolwork gives students a sense of purpose, discipline, happiness, and belonging. In addition, it is common knowledge that being involved in extracurricular activities looks better on college applications than not being involved.
With all these obligations, what can sleep-deprived students do to get more sleep? Intro to Law and Personal Finance teacher Mrs. Fox advises students that “high school is a way to prepare you for some of the challenges you will face later on in life. In the future, you will find that there are never enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do. An important skill to learn now and apply later on in life is to prioritize what is vital to do right now, and what can wait. That is an extremely important skill to use in college and in your future career, but you will never make those good decisions for yourself if you don’t get enough sleep!”
So, what is the lullaby of Ridge High students? Is it the scratch of pencil on paper, or the click of a mouse while perusing Facebook? Is it the rustling of textbook pages and the sighs of resignation, or are the nightlights of Ridge High students the screens of their phones? Or are extracurricular activities most to blame for loss of sleep? What is the lullaby of Ridge students? Is the answer to the mystery of the lullaby of Ridge students more important than the fact not enough sleep follows that lullaby?