Getting at least eight hours of sleep is a joke.  For most students, six hours of sleep is how much they get a night.  It is hard to get through the day and the truth is, it’s costing the students everything.

According to the National Institution of Health and the Office of Science Education’s website, eight full hours of sleep every night is the minimum amount that a high school student needs.  Sleep is a necessity to keep the body working strong. Kids between the ages of 12-18 should get eight and a half to 10 hours of sleep each night, according to Helpguide.org.

It seems as if society believes high school students are supposed to survive on little to no sleep. Following the motions of waking up at 6:30 a.m., going to school until 2:40 p.m., playing a sport till 5:30 p.m. at school, playing an extracurricular activity till 8:00 p.m., and doing homework until midnight gets old fast. With these crazy demands, it seems like the only thing to do is cut
back on sleep.

Sleep consists of five cycles. Each cycle lasts around 90 minutes.  If these cycles are cut short for whatever reason, it can leave a person feeling stressed, tired, and anxious. Sleep is a necessity
not a luxury.

With the typical teenage non-stop schedule, something has to give. Whether it is sports, a social life, or school, things start to slip. According to the Office of Science Education’s website, it has been proven that “sleepiness may be associated with difficulty concentrating, memory lapses, loss of energy, fatigue, lethargy, and emotional instability.”

Because students hardly get any sleep, they become exhausted and fall asleep in class. Their performance in school declines and their grades plummet.  Staying in school and retaining no information because a student is simply tired is the same as not going to school at all.

Lack of sleep not only affects a student’s school life, but personal life as well, and may even lead to death.  According to the Office of Science Education’s website, “Approximately 100,000 automobile
crashes each year result from drivers who were asleep at the wheel.” There are many mornings where I can barely stay awake at the wheel.

Many students try to use the weekend to catch up on sleep, but it doesn’t work. “One or two solid nights of sleep aren’t enough to pay off a long-term debt,” according to Helpguide.org.  Catch-up sleep could give a student a temporary energy rush Monday morning, but by the afternoon, the student would be completely exhausted again.

Why should a student do over six hours of school and then over four hours of homework a night? It seems as though sleep is being replaced with work, but how can a student be expected to perform their best in class, do their homework, get good grades, and get a full eight hours of sleep? It is not plausible.

“The quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your waking life, including your mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity, physical vitality, and even your weight,” according to Helpguide.org. Though the short-term rewards of no sleep seem great, it’s the long term effects that could harm teens.

Homework should take at most 30 minutes per subject. Students have at least six classes per week, and that alone will guarantee over three and a half hours on homework. If teachers would take into consideration student’s lives then they would understand students physically not being able to complete homework. Their class discussions would improve.  Most importantly, students would be healthier.

Now, I know it is difficult for teachers to not give a lot of homework since it is considered a way of learning, but with less homework and more sleep students will be more active in class and homework won’t be needed. Projects could be done in class. Busy work can be done away with. The only homework students should be doing is studying for tests and quizzes. Maybe if teachers had a test and quiz calendar somewhere, then students wouldn’t have four tests in one day.

This is an issue that has been hurting teens over the years that needs to be fixed.

Megan Foard is a Multimedia Editor for the Patriot and jcpatriot.com