1 April 2008
For immediate release
Late to bed, late to rise - findings suggest
teenagers prefer to function as night owls
Getting teenagers out of bed is no easy task. Numerous studies indicate that at the
onset of puberty, adolescents become more ‘evening typed’, preferring later
bedtimes and wake times.
In the Journal of Adolescence, a new report by Swinburne researchers Dr Suzanne
Warner, Dr Greg Murray and Dr Denny Meyer details the sleep patterns of 310
Australian senior school students, including information surrounding their sleep
quality, mood, daytime functioning, grades and circadian preference. By comparing
patterns for holiday and school-term, the researchers believed they could capture a
teenager's ideal sleep schedule.
Students get significantly less sleep when they are in school term - roughly one hour
and 17 minutes less a night than when on holiday. They also have to wake up
considerably earlier - about two hours and 30 minutes sooner. In contrast, the
students tended to adopt a later sleep/wake routine during the holidays.
The research showed that ideally students need about eight hours and 45 minutes of
sleep, but during the holidays they tend to get about nine hours and 12 minutes.
During school term, they typically get less than eight hours.
As a result, students overall reported more depressed moods, increased feelings of
unhappiness, impaired daytime functioning, sleepiness during the day, irritation with
others, problems controlling emotions and increased complaints of lethargy.
Results provide further support that sleep is a crucial aspect of adolescent health
and well being - and sadly, many young people are obtaining insufficient or poor
sleep quality during the school term.
With day-to-day functioning compromised, the task of learning becomes even more
challenging for teenagers - especially those that are ‘night owls’.
The abstract and full text article ‘Holiday and school-term sleep patterns of
Australian adolescents’ in the Journal of Adolescence can be found at
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