Sleep deprivation common among children

Northwest Elementary School LPN Karen Sweigert recently had a student come to her office complaining that he was unable to stay awake in class.

When she called his mother, the reason became obvious: the student hadn’t slept at all that night.

“It seems to be getting more of a regular thing to have a student come down not feeling well and respond that they hadn’t slept the night before or went to bed really late,” Sweigert said.

The reasons students struggle to sleep are varied: some stay up late studying, some older students have jobs that keep them out to as late as 11 p.m., some are playing games or watching television in the late night hours, and some simply can’t fall asleep, according to Lebanon High School certified school nurse Leslie Attig.

Both school officials and pediatricians said sleep deprivation among children seems to be becoming more prevalent and involving increasingly younger ages — and newer technology may be to blame. Parents are also concerned, according to a recent survey of 3,000 parents by not-for-profit productivity website Stop Procrastinating.

According to the survey, 62 percent of parents have discovered their children browsing social media or the Internet when they were supposed to be sleeping, 51 percent said late-night technology usage had affected their child’s ability to finish homework, and 37 percent are concerned that the lack of sleep could be leading to anxiety and depression.

New distractions

Teenagers need at least 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation — and multiple studies suggested parents are right to be worried that their children are not achieving that goal.

According to a peer-reviewed study of American high school students published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, only 7.7 percent of female and 9.4 percent of male students reported getting at least nine hours of sleep each night in 2013 while 20.9 percent of female students and 16.5 percent of male students reported getting fewer than five hours of sleep per night.

A 2014 poll by the National Sleep Foundation suggested technology as a likely culprit. More than half of American school-aged children have at least two electronic devises, like televisions, computers, video games, smartphones or music players, in their bedroom at night, the poll of parents found. Those that do have electronic devices on at night in their bedroom had fewer hours and lower quality of sleep than those that don't.

Sleep deprivation among teenagers is not a new problem, according to Randal Medzoyan, a pediatrician at WellSpan Good Samaritan Pediatrics in Lebanon. In the 19th Century, experts warned that children were staying up too late reading novels — and, while sleep recommendations for teenagers have gradually decreased over time, the average teenager has always gotten less sleep than whatever the current recommendation is, he said.

Still, technological devises like iPads and smartphones facilitate the problem because they are addictive and stressful, he said.

“There’s something inherently attractive about it, like candy,” he said.

Teenagers who are sleep-deprived then want to sleep in on weekends to make up for lost sleep during the week, said Dr. Harish Rao, director of the Pediatric Sleep Program at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. That can create a vicious cycle in which children then have difficulty waking up in time for school on weekdays.

Technology can also make it challenging for users to fall asleep. The “bluelight effect” — overexposure to light along the blue-green spectrum common to technological devises — can decrease the production of melatonin in the brain, Rao said. Electronic games, in particular, can put people's brains into problem-solving mode and create difficulties in switching to sleep mode, Medzoyan said.

Children are also woken in the middle of the night because they get a text or other alert, thus interrupting the sleep cycle, said Roger Brock, owner of Sleep Analysis Consultants LLC of Hershey.

“It’s disrupting their sleep patterns,” Brock said. “If you keep getting woken up, that clock keeps getting reset.”

When people fall asleep with technology still on, the quality of sleep can also be reduced, Rao said. If someone really needs background noise to fall asleep, a sleep machine that has a timer and automatically turns off is preferable, Brock said.

Consequences

While many people think they have more important things to do than sleep, that attitude ignores the biological facts about the importance of rest, according to Medzoyan.

“Many animals risk their lives to be hunted down while they're asleep,” he said.

Sleep deprivation among youth can cause not only obvious symptoms like fatigue and drowsiness while driving motor vehicles, but also headaches and obesity, since children who are sleep-deprived tend to eat more, experts said. It can also increase the risk of depression and suicide.

Among younger children, sleep deprivation can also manifest itself through irritability and a lack of ability to concentrate, Medzoyan said. A lack of sleep can also have academic consequences, especially since it affects concentration.

At both the elementary and secondary school levels, school nurses said students come to their offices simply because they want sleep or cannot function due to lack of sleep.

“We did not see this when I first started — it is progressively getting worse,” said Katherine Renik, an elementary school LPN in the Lebanon School District.

For both adults and children, the solution to avoiding these problems is simple — get more sleep — but finding the discipline to stick with a sleep regimen can be challenging in an increasingly hectic world that values making money and constant human interaction, Medzoyan said.

“We want more,” he said. “Just because we know what the answer is, doesn’t mean we’ve figured out how to reconcile it with the things we want out of life.”

Tips for a good night's sleep:

Here are several pieces of advice for helping your children get the quality and quantity of sleep they need, according to local experts and the National Sleep Foundation:

• Turn off all electronic devices at least 90 minutes before bedtime, and make children keep all electronic devices outside of their bedrooms when they go to bed.
• Create a routine of late-night activities for your children — such as reading a book or grooming the dog — that involve lower levels of mental stimulation before bedtime.
• Keep children’s sleep times on weekdays and weekends no more than two hours apart.
• Make sleep times roughly correspond with darkness, particularly in wintertime, to avoid depression.
• Avoid caffeine near bedtime, including drinks like cola and iced tea that are popular among children.
• Naps can be helpful, but avoid naps that are too long or too close to bedtime.