How School Start Times Are Affecting Teens

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It’s 5:30 A.M. and your eyes quickly open to an alarm screaming at you. Rolling over and slamming it off, you lay there for a second longer wondering what would happen if you were to just fall back asleep. Remembering how you had to stay up all hours of the night, to finish mass of homework assigned to you. Reluctantly getting up, you start getting ready for school. Most teens go through this, or something very similar to, everyday. Getting up in the morning can be quite difficult for high schoolers and most school start times are between 7-8, according to American Psychological Association. (Later School) These start times cause for students to have to start getting ready anywhere from 5-6 A.M. and even earlier if they live further away. When these students are staying up until 10:30-11 P.M. due to their circadian rhythm (the body clock) and possibly later if they have hours of homework, this causes problems with their health and academics. This is a major problem for American teens who should be getting 9-9.5 hours of sleep a night. (Yeager) The early start times are affecting students in very negative ways in both their academics and health, and something needs to be done.
According to the American
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(Harding) Sleep deprivation and depression go hand in hand according to Mahmood Siddique, a sleep medical specialist at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In another study done by SLEEP in 2010, more than half of 262 high school seniors reported being excessively sleepy when reading, watching TV, and doing homework. Siddiqui says that the best cure for these symptoms of sleep deprivation depression is to work on getting the correct amount of sleep for one's age. (Harding) By pushing back the start time of school, kids would be able to get up to an extra hour of sleep, and that could go a very long