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posted by martyb on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:50PM   Printer-friendly

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

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:08PM (4 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:08PM (#744378) Homepage Journal

    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.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:58PM (#744393)

    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.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:27AM (#744500)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @09:08AM (#744558)

      No one will even have a clue what your grades were in High School..

      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.)