With the advent of gadgets and how young people tend to be addicted to these devices, many blame the use of technology as the reason why many teens lack sleep.
While using too much of their smartphones and tablets could indeed have unwanted effects on their ability to get the much needed rest at night, findings of a new study suggest of another factor that could explain why as many as a third of teenagers in the U.S. do not get enough sleep.
For the new study published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, Katherine Keyes, from Columbia University, involved over 270,000 students who were in their eight, 10th and 12th grade at more than 100 schools in the U.S., who were asked about their sleeping habits.
The students in particular were surveyed how often they get at least seven hours of sleep at night and how often they do not get the amount of sleep that they need. Among Keyes' key findings was that young people get less and less sleep over the study period spanning 20 years.
Experts recommend that teens get between 9 or ten hours of sleep but Keyes found that more than half of the participants between 15 and 19 years old did not get seven hours of sleep each night. The drop in night sleep was also observed in teens of all ages during the study period with the biggest drop seen among 15 year olds.
More than half of the kids this age said that they get at least seven hours of sleep at night in 1991. By 2012, less than 43 percent reported getting this amount of sleep. In 1991, 30 percent of the 15 year olds said that they get enough sleep. In 2012, only 24 percent do.
Keyes said that she anticipated to observe a more drastic drop in sleep in more recent years with the popularity of social media, cellphones and tablets but this is not what her team has found. The researcher, however, pointed out that this corresponded with periods marked by another trend that affect many teens, the rise of childhood obesity. Obesity is linked with a number of health problems and these include sleep changes such as apnea.
"The decreases in sleep particularly in the 1990s across all ages corresponds to a time period when we also saw increases in pediatric obesity across all ages," Keyes said.
