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Sleep-deprived teens more apt to drink, smoke and have unsafe sex:
Teens who get too little sleep may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors like drinking, smoking, and unprotected sex than their peers who get enough rest at night, a study of U.S. high school students suggests.
Roughly seven in 10 American high school students average less than eight hours of sleep a night, falling short of the recommended eight to 10 hours adolescents need for optimal physical and mental health, the study found.
Compared with teens who got at least eight hours of sleep, high school students who got less than six hours were twice as likely to drink alcohol, almost twice as likely to use tobacco, and more than twice as likely to use other drugs or engage in risky sexual activity.
High school students who got less than six hours of sleep a night were also more than three times more likely to engage in self-harm activities or to contemplate or attempt suicide, compared to teens who got eight hours or more of sleep on a typical night.
While the study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how sleep might directly impact teen behavior, it’s possible that insufficient sleep leads to changes in the brain that make risky behavior more likely, said lead study author Matthew Weaver of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
[...] One limitation of the study is that it relied on teenagers to accurately report their sleeping habits and risky behaviors, the authors note. It’s also possible that factors not measured in the study might impact both sleep times and risky behaviors.
Journal Reference:
Matthew D. Weaver, PhD; Laura K. Barger, PhD; Susan Kohl Malone, PhD, RN, NCSN; et al Lori S. Anderson, PhD, RN, CPNP-PC, NCSN; Elizabeth B. Klerman, MD, PhD
JAMA Pediatr. Published online October 1, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.2777
Dose-Dependent Associations Between Sleep Duration and Unsafe Behaviors Among US High School Students
Submitted via IRC for chromas
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:54PM (14 children)
Headline is a head scratcher -- maybe it should read "kids who party get less sleep" -- to turn the equation the other way (getting less sleep makes kids party) seems like a bit of a leap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:03PM (7 children)
This was my first thought. That and it was an uncontrolled experiment.
Personally, i was very sleep deprived growing up (we lived far from school, so it took a few hours each way) and didn't engage in any of their risky behaviors. Maybe they should study why some kids did while others did not and figure out why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @09:01PM (1 child)
Single obs may disprove physics, not so much other stats based “science”.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:18PM
Corner cases are always the most interesting.
Stick 100 identical plants in a dark room for a month and they all die. OK, plants die in the dark.
Stick 100 identical plants in a dark room for a month and they all die except one which seems to thrive. You could learn a lot about what it takes to survive in the dark. Maybe a variation in the soil, temperature variation in the room, a special protein, genetically different chlorophyll?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
Same thing, just reading it 'correlation is not causation' jumped out at me.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:53PM (1 child)
More apropos, I think they may need to think a bit harder about which is cause and which is effect.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 05 2018, @07:52AM
And they all might be symptoms of a problematic household. Some parents might take the videogame away from you because you need to sleep, others don't care or even engage in similar behavior and the kid learns.
OTOH sleep deprivation surely messes up the depth of decision making processes, which means that a well done experiment (which can't be performed because it's cruel towards teens) would probably find a cause effect link between sleep deprivation and bad decisions anyway.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:52PM (1 child)
I've never smoked, never touched alcohol. Not one sip -- I saw what it did to my brother. And I don't get too much sleep. 3, 4, 5 hours and I'm PERFECTO!!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 05 2018, @07:54AM
You're doing a tremendous job (if you are trying to corroborate that study in the summary).
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:04PM (3 children)
If science has proven one thing, it's that humans are hard-wired to interpret correlation as causation.
I do sincerely believe that the vast majority of people just cannot differentiate between these concepts, regardless of how much they are explained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:17PM (1 child)
Its not "people", its medical (in this case) researchers. Then the general population ("the people") is just using the argument from authority heuristic and not thinking much about the topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:50PM
Thus, it must be the case that the vast majority of people just don't get it, and never will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:18PM
There are also a lot of people who don't understand that certain sciences cannot exist without applied statistics.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:33PM
Agreed. Kids who stay up late, and/or all night, roaming the streets, or crashing parties aren't going to get a lot of sleep. It isn't the lack of sleep that causes drinking, smoking, and unsafe sex. These kids went out in search of excitement, and lost sleep as a consequence. I remember those days well!
Work all day, party all night, work again all day, come home, sit or lie down for a couple hours sleep, get up, shower, and head out again in search of - whatever. I was in search of wine, women, and song, and sleep was simply not important at that point in my life.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 05 2018, @05:36PM
My insomnia started well before my partying did.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by donkeyhotay on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:56PM (6 children)
I imagine this is the same with adults. In fact all of these behaviors seem to go together pretty often. It's all escapism.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:27PM (5 children)
I know I can tolerate less sleep, or wake up feeling more energetic after I've had a night of good sex. I imagine for many people it is similar with booze, partying, and other drugs. It is all about finding something that the day after left you feeling relaxed, even if you're not any more well rested than you could have been otherwise.
The real question might be: Why are we forcing people to overwork themselves and undersleep, thus triggering a need for other forms of release to continue going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:38PM (2 children)
The obvious solution to your problem is to stop having sex in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:06PM (1 child)
General who?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @01:41PM
No, that's the Doctor.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:49PM
Sleep is less easily monetized than other forms of release.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:02PM
That's honestly not one of the brighter ideas I've ever seen. Sure booze-partying is relaxing, but it's relaxing "during," not the next day. The next day the booze-partier says "Get me through this alive and I swear I'll never drink again" with newfound religious zeal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lester on Thursday October 04 2018, @08:50PM (3 children)
Teens that drink, smoke and have unsafe sex are more apt to party every night and get sleep-deprived
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:00PM (2 children)
Good-ole causation/corellation snafu.
For all we know gettign ass-fucked without a condom causes one to not sleep well.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:07PM
And it's intentional. Adapted from our summary above:
One hundred scientists surveyed, top ten answers on the board, show me...
"Correlation Demonstrates Causation!"
- X - (buzzing sound)
Oh, my. We've got some lovely consolation prizes for you backstage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:54PM
You haven't boofed yet, have you?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @09:09PM (1 child)
This study is only about U.S high school students and may not apply to places where families are strong and not very liberal/retarded. Most of those students will not do much with their lives. As others mentioned, those activities (drinking, smoking, unsafe sex) are an escape from other problems they were not able to handle. These young persons are not very smart and are lost in the search to find meaning in their lives. With encouragement from jewish TV, jewish social media, they look for approval from peers when none should be needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @09:22PM
Just be thankful Forrest Trump felt it fit to be concerned enough about you to force his emergency alert onto you. Radioactive rape, for your own good. If it wasn't for Forrest Trump you would be ignored.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:08PM (4 children)
You guys really need to be more responsible in your headline editing. You're going to have every teenager on the planet trying to get by on three hours of sleep because they're dumbasses and don't understand which direction causality happens here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:58PM
You say that like it's a bad thing. What's your point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:27AM (2 children)
I spent 8th grade sleeping about 4 hours a night. It was meh. The extra time was spent mostly watching StarTrek reruns, and pondering the meaning of existance.
My grades did not suffer, especially since grades do not matter at all till College. Just ace your placement test at CC, and get 4.0 to transfer. No one will even have a clue what your grades were in High School.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @09:08AM (1 child)
I'm in my mid 50's, recently made redundant from my previous position so an now having fun applying for work, I've had one personnel department ask me for this information, no provide? We can't accept ('process' was the word they used on the phone) my application any further.
Strange, but true.
(And a good indication that the organisation had a systemic bureaucratic idiocy infection, so was probably best avoided anyway..yes, I've got the information, but what bloody relevance has it to anyone after all this time? Needless to say I didn't bother..I'm not that desperate yet.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 05 2018, @10:38AM
You're in your 50s and still have record of your highschool grades? You're a shitload better at record-keeping than I am.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:39PM
Then have them go to bed earlier. But, that is too obvious to be considered a realistic solution for most people.