High School Should Start Later

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Imagine that your alarm chimes. Your dream about flying was interrupted, and you feel grouchy and drained. The fact is, you were not ready to wake up. Sometimes students don’t get enough sleep due to the early start times at their school and the amount of homework they are assigned. In fact, most students get less sleep than they need. High schools should start around 8:30 to 8:45 because it could improve the school experience for the student body ,it is the recommended time for school to start, and students need more sleep. First of all, when students get more rest their experience at school can improve. The University of Minnesota conducted a study from 2011-2014 that showed “later high school start times improve both student grades and …show more content…
Sarah McKibben’s article “Wake Up Call” states that about “⅔ of high school students get less than 7 hours of sleep” (7), and again, Szabo states that The American Academy of Pediatrics says that students need 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep. This means that the majority of high school students need at least 1.5 more hours of sleep each night. If students don’t get enough sleep, they could suffer a multitude of consequences. Justin O’neill states, there is an increased chance of depression, obesity, illness, and anxiety, in his article “Should Schools Start Later” (20). Why would we make the lives of high school students more hectic?
Some may argue that teens should sleep earlier and they should be fine. I would argue that there are so many factors that make it very difficult for students to sleep earlier. High school students have to deal with a large amount of homework, perhaps a part-time job, and after school activities. All these things take make it tough for students to sleep earlier. Not only that, but the National Sleep Foundation’s article “Sleep Drive and Your Body Clock” found that the circadian rhythm, or biological clock is delayed during adolescence (1). This means that naturally it is difficult for teenagers to sleep
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