Most students fail to get the recommended amount of sleep at night
The CDC recommends that youth between the ages of 13 and 18 get 8-10 hours of sleep at night, but according to them only 27% of students do.
Graphic created by Emilie James
Students trudge to school at 8:00 am on a cloudy, cold morning. Even after the schools began starting half an hour later, most of LSHS’ students are still not getting enough sleep. This has caused them to fall asleep in their classes, which can lead to missing important lessons, more homework.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that students who do not achieve at least eight hours of sleep “have a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, injuries, poor mental health, and problems with attention and behavior,” (CDC).
A survey conducted at LSHS regarding the amount of sleep students have been getting found that only about 35% of the students got eight or more hours of sleep on average.
While this is a better percentage than the CDC’s data, it is still a comparatively low number. This means roughly 65% of students at LSHS are getting less than their recommended hours. But how exactly does this affect our students?
Junior Saho Yamashita only gets around three hours of sleep at night, which she attributes to attending three separate schools. She has a lot more homework than the average student, which contributes heavily to her poor sleep schedule.
“Sometimes I’m really tired in class… when I get home it’s really hard to do my homework because I’m so tired,” Yamashita said.
Junior Trinity Kostelyk only gets about 6 or 7 hours of sleep after working her job in retail.
“When I have later shifts, and I get home late, I have stuff to do when I get home… I can’t go to sleep until, like, really late at night,” Kostelyk said.
