The Effects of School Starting to Early is Sleepy Teens

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Almost 70% of students don’t get enough sleep, and there is one major cause of this problem: School starting too early. Many schools have decided to start before the sun rises, which can cause problems for their students. It’s no secret that when a person loses sleep, they are tired the next day; but what most people don’t realize is how big of an effect this lost sleep has on the body. The kind of sleep loss that occurs because of these early wake up calls has major effects on students, mainly lack of focus and memory, but also can cause weight gain danger behind the wheel.
The biggest effect that early start times have on teens is lack of focus in school. According to The Gale Encyclopedia of Children’s Health ‘s article “Sleep”, teenagers need an average of 10 hours of sleep a night. If a normal teenager were to get 10 hours of sleep on a school night, they would have to be asleep by 9 o’clock at night, meaning they’d have to be in bed by about 8 or 8:30; we all know that it is very unlikely for a high schooler to go to bed then. With the all the after school activities and homework that kids have to do, an 8 o’clock bed time is just unrealistic. Of course, they then lose precious sleep. According to The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology ‘s article “Rapid Eye Movement (REM)”, there is a huge link between the amount of REM sleep that a person gets and their attentiveness throughout the day. REM sleep also has been connected to memory, a common thing that a student needs in school. The average person gets their most important amount of REM sleep between the 7th and 8th hour. If a person only gets 6 hours of sleep on a regular basis, they’re missing all that recharging time for their brain. Their focus won’t be as good the next morn...

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...that observed the driving of two different cities, one whose schools started later than the other. The results showed that the town with more sleep had 41% less accidents among students than the town with less. 41%! That just proves how much sleep can impact a person’s driving.
Early school start times affects its students in a number of different ways, like changes in weight and driving habits, but mainly in focus during school. This may not seem like a large problem to most people, but they don’t realize just how much it affects our students. The low grades could make it difficult to get into a good college; the change in chemicals in the brain could create weight problems that the student will have to deal with for the rest of their lives; the exhaustion may cause them to get in a car crash and die. Is that really something that people are willing to overlook?

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