Sleep Deprived Teens Suffer Mentally & Physically – How To Help

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we are going to talk about something I deal with in my clinic almost daily, not to mention in my personal life as a mom, and that is sleep deprived teens. The issue of teens not getting enough quality sleep has reached almost epidemic proportions for many reasons, and it’s something that most adults don’t recognize as a driver of both physical and mental health issues in young people. There are specific steps we need to take to address sleep deprivation and teens. And some opportunities we had to influence policies around things like school start times. To explore this with us today, I’ve invited Lisa Lewis on the show. Let me tell you a bit about her.

She’s the author of The Sleep Deprived Teen: Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive, described as “A call to action” by Arianna Huffington, and “An urgent and timely read” by Daniel Pink. The book is an outgrowth of her previous work on the topic, including her role helping get California’s landmark law, unhealthy school start times, passed. Lewis has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and many others. She’s also a parent to a teen and a recent teen, and lives in California. Lisa, welcome to the show. Such a pleasure to have you here.

Lisa Lewis  

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

So let’s start sort of with the big why around this for you, which is why did you decide to get into this topic as a journalist, around sleep deprivation in teens?

Lisa Lewis  

Yes. So I am a parent, as you mentioned. I’m also a parenting journalist, and often, those roles overlap. So my recent teen, he’s 20 now, he’s really sort of the reason that I got involved in all this, because when he started high school, which was 2015, our high school at that point started at 7:30 in the morning. So that was the point where it hit my radar, because all of a sudden, I was driving him to school, we were leaving the house at 7:10 every single morning, and I could tell he was just not awake and alert and ready to learn. And 7:30 is just so early. So I started looking into it, and as a parenting journalists, that’s often how topics come about that I end up writing about, because they touch my life in some way. And in this case, what I quickly realized was that the issue of school start times and these too early start times, specifically, was not unique to our community. And there was already a large body of research out there saying that schools really should not be starting that early in the morning. So I kind of tapped into it as it was hitting a critical mass, I started writing about the issue. An op-ed that I wrote that ran in the LA Times in September of 2016, it was called “Why School Should Start Later in the Day”, that was read by one of our California state senators, Anthony Portantino, and he had a high schooler of his own at that point. So he’s reading this in the paper, it resonated with him, and in fact, his daughter’s high school was in the midst of conversations about changing their start time. So this was very much something that he related to. He started looking into the issue, ended up introducing a state bill on the topic, and I got involved in that entire legislative journey, which was two and a half years until it was actually signed into law, which was October of 2019. It got signed into law, but there was a three-year implementation window. So it just went into effect on July 1 in California. It is the first law of its scope in the entire country, and it sets minimum start times. So for high school, public high schools in California cannot start any earlier than 8:30, and middle schools cannot start any earlier than eight o’clock.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Amazing. I know of several individual districts and schools throughout the country that have made some policy changes in this direction, but wow, to have an entire state, especially a state the size of California saying “We are going to prioritize this statewide for the health of our kids”, that is like a monumental accomplishment, really.

Lisa Lewis  

It was amazing that this came about. And as I mentioned, I really had tapped into something that had hit a critical mass back when I started writing about it. The AAP, American Academy of Pediatrics, had just issued their statement in 2014 on healthy school start times. So we were fortunate throughout the process to have all of these sleep researchers and advocates who were supportive of the California State Bill, writing letters of support. The lead author of the AAP statement was publicly supportive of this. So it really was this group effort. But to your point, California, not only are we the first state to do this on a statewide level, we are also the most populous state. So just in terms of scope, it’s going to affect about 3 million adolescents in the state of California when you look at public school enrollment at the middle and high schools.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

It’s awesome. And I want to talk about why this is important, because I think some adults listening are like “7:30 is not that early, some people start work at 7:30. I have to get out of the house at 7:30.” But this really overlooks what we understand about the unique developmental phase of adolescence and even pre-adolescence. And so I’d love to have you speak to that, to people who are going “Kids these days, they just don’t want to get up early”, or whatever. There really is something unique about teens and sleep, right?

Lisa Lewis  

Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up because that is something that came up time and time again, which is “Well, they should just go to bed earlier.” And to your point, they can’t. There is an actual biological change that takes place at the onset of puberty. Their circadian rhythm shifts, so their internal body clock of when they start feeling sleepy shifts later. And that’s because melatonin begins to be released later in the evening than it used to, it doesn’t subside until later in the morning. So their whole sleep schedule does shift later, compared to say, when you have a six year old and they run hard all day, and then they collapse at eight o’clock at night, and then boom, they’re up at 6:30 in the morning ready to go. Well, teens do not do that. Most teens are not up and ready to go at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning. And so when you think about the fact that they have this circadian rhythm shift, they’re not really sleepy until about 11 o’clock at night, and they should be getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep, that’s the official recommendation, so you just do the math: If they can’t go to sleep until about 11, and they need 8 to 10 hours of sleep, if they have to be sitting at their desks at 7:30, it makes it virtually impossible for them to get enough sleep. And then one last thing, just real quick, is compared to adults, adults don’t need 8 to 10 hours of sleep, we need 7 to 9. So that is a key difference.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

And by that point, our circadian rhythms have shifted again to where we have more choice, we have more options, even from a biological standpoint. Teens get such a bad rap for so many things, and we really, as adults, parents, teachers, professionals, we really need to step back and just have a lot more empathy for our teens, and even our preteens. Most of us would not go back and relive those years for anything. I mean, they’re tough, and I think we tend to put a lot of blame or expectation on teens, forgetting that they’re in the second fastest phase of their growth and development. Infancy is the only phase of development where there’s more happening on a physiological and neurological level, and so we need to recognize that, and this sleep piece is a big piece of it. It’s always been funny to me, you mentioned six-year-olds, really, the research has shown for a long time that we have had this backwards. If we want for busing reasons or whatever to stagger our start times, it’s the little kids who should be starting school early and the older kids who should be later because of the biology of those circadian rhythms.

Lisa Lewis  

Exactly, exactly. And what happened was, in so many cases, those schedules were set years ago. Back to your point, they were set because of the bus schedule. They were not set based on student wellbeing. And in fairness, the information about teen sleep was not as widely known. So at that point, when they started using this same fleet of buses for elementary, middle and high and they figured out, “Well, we will put the older kids earliest because they’re better able to handle it.” Well now we know that’s not the case. And yet these are what I call legacy schedules that have just endured. The one thing though, is nobody really should be starting school at 7:30. I mean, that’s the point. Yeah. So you don’t want your first graders going to school that early either. Really, 8 o’clock is sort of more of a common sense earliest start time. So that is the other piece. When it’s driven by the buses, that sort of seems to have it backwards in terms of: Why are we sending our kids to school? So that they can learn and we want them to be awake, and we want to be doing this at the right time for them, not on what’s convenient for the buses.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Right, right. No, absolutely. And I think I’ve heard arguments too around “Well, they need to get done earlier because they have sports teams”, and those things. But here’s the interesting thing: In places that have made changes with this, somehow they find a way to work that out. Sports practices can start a little later. Kids can go to work a little later. Because again, we are we are no longer thinking about, “Well, they need to be home by 8 to get to bed. They’re naturally not falling asleep until later anyway, so we need to really prioritize preserving that morning sleep time so they get enough, and also to your point, so their brain wakes up. My kids are 15 through 22 now, and so we have been living this for many years now. And even though they’re responsible, they get up, they set the alarm, they’re up at 6, and I had kids in band and orchestra that had to meet in what they call zero hour. So my oldest two boys were leaving the house at 6:20 in the morning, because they would start at 6:50 if they wanted to do those electives before the regular day started. And they would set the alarm, and they would get up, and they would do it. But you could tell their brains were not fully engaged. They were physically awake, they were making breakfast, getting dressed, getting out the door. But that was a big reason why we have prioritized driving them. My kids go to a school where we don’t qualify for busing. That was a big reason why my husband and I prioritized driving them in the morning, thinking we don’t want our teen drivers — and they’re good drivers, they’re safe drivers. But with a brain that’s still half asleep at 6:30 in the morning, driving to school and navigating all that. And I believe that there is some good research around school start times and accidents of teens, correct?

Lisa Lewis  

Oh, yeah. In fact, I have a whole chapter in my book, all about drowsy driving. Because teen drivers, they can be doing their best, but they’re new drivers. They don’t have the same experience that we do. So the kind of things that are just second nature to us, like, you are approaching your light, it’s turning yellow, how do you quickly make that decision? Should you go through? Should you brake? That comes with practice. They don’t yet have that. And when you layer the sleep deprivation on top, you are right. I mean teens already are the most dangerous drivers out there. So what they have found, in fact, in districts that have changed their start times is that drowsy driving crashes among teen drivers have gone down. Because yeah, they’re not fully awake and alert. And that is really not the best situation when you are behind the wheel.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

I think I first started reading those studies several years ago, and I was like, “Yeah.” I mean, this literally can be a life or death issue. When you see districts that have made these changes, just the reduction in accidents and deaths from traffics, let alone all the other things, you realize really how critically important this is. For all humans, sleep is important, but for teens, especially because of their phase of development, it is rare for me to meet with a teen coming into my clinic, who is getting adequate amounts of quality sleep. Almost 100% of them are sleep deprived in terms of quantity of hours of sleep, quality of sleep, or typically both, and there’s lots of reasons for that. But that has terrible implications for their brain function, for their mental health, which are generally the reasons that I’m seeing them, it is because they’re experiencing onset of significant mental health issues. And yet, what I find is almost never are those dots connected of “How are you sleeping? Let’s delve into that. Let’s really talk about that. teens will often say things to me that they won’t when their parents are in there. I’ll kick their parents out, and then you have a one-on-one conversation and they admit to maybe getting three or four hours of sleep. They may be in bed for six or seven. But between some of them trying to finish up homework late at night, or “My friend was having issues and so was texting with me in the middle of the night” or “I got scrolling on YouTube, and suddenly it’s two in the morning”, all of those things. I mean, it is very rare for me to meet a teen in my practice, who is getting adequate sleep. And I’d love to have you talk about what you found around that in your research, and also why that is such a problem for our teens.

Lisa Lewis  

Oh, yeah. Oh, there’s so much to say about all of this. And it’s disheartening, and yet, it’s not surprising to hear that virtually all of your clients have sleep issues. The most recent data that I came across was from the CDC, the Youth Risk Behavior survey. So this is 2019. At that point, only about one in five high schoolers, 22%, were getting at least eight hours of sleep, which is that minimum of the 8 to 10 hours they should be getting. And being sleep deprived, across the board, has ramifications. There is literally nothing that we do better when we are sleep deprived. So you look at driving, as we were talking about, clearly, you don’t want to be in a sleep deprived state when you are behind the wheel. In the classroom, it impedes the whole process of learning, because when you are sleep deprived, you do not acquire or retain the information as well, nor are you able to retrieve it when you need to be able to build on concepts, etc. Mental Health though, is one of the biggest. And mental health issues with adolescents were already severe, even pre pandemic, and they’ve just gone up since. So the issue is when you are sleep deprived, everything feels more intense. So all of our emotions feel more intense. Teens, already, as you mentioned earlier, they’re in this major phase of brain development, and what that means is they are more prone to risky behaviors already, and to impulsive behaviors. And sleep deprivation just sort of adds to that. It makes them even riskier; it exacerbates depression, anxiety, suicidality. So across the board, it just sort of erodes some of their emotional resiliency. And it makes it that much harder to cope with everything they have going on. Oh, my goodness. And then you were mentioning tech, I mean, I could go off on that, too. I have a whole chapter on that. Because tech, there’s their use of it, and then there’s also the tech they have to use just for their schoolwork. So there’s so much to say about that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Again, I think we just take it for granted. We just think, “Well, they’re old enough now, they can deal with it.” But the piece about them needing 8 to 10 hours of sleep, I don’t know what you found in talking to his parents, I find when I tell parents of teens, that most of them are very surprised to hear that at that age, they need that much, and that’s where that understanding of the physiology of what’s happening during that stage of development, and that sleep literally allows for that energy intensive process of rapid brain growth, maturation, physical growth, I mean, kids are growing rapidly, and that sleep is one of the things that allows for that to happen. And then you sort of see things click with parents, but I find that most parents are surprised to hear how much sleep their teens really should be getting.

Lisa Lewis  

Yes, I agree. And to your point, literally, growth hormone is released while we are sleeping. So that is, of course, as you would expect, important for growth. It’s also for healing from injuries, recovery. But the 8 to 10 hours is something that I just feel like not enough people truly, really understand. Up until age 18, that’s the official amount they should be getting. And to be fair, it is sort of hard. You look at your teens, particularly when they’re juniors or seniors in high school, they’re starting to look like adults. But they are not adults, yet. They still have so much brain development that’s going on. That prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. And so things like risk assessment and decision making, and all the executive functions are not fully developed. And then you add in sleep deprivation, it makes it even harder. But yeah, one of my overarching messages is just to make sleep a priority. And so it does start with knowing how much sleep they should be getting, and how much sleep we as parents should be getting, because when you talk about the parent-child interaction, it just goes more smoothly when both sides are well-rested. It’s not setting us up for success if you have got a sleep-deprived parent and a sleep deprived teen.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

So true, and I think that modeling piece is big, too. We can’t honestly expect our kids to listen to us about getting enough sleep, when they see us burning the candle at both ends and working into the late hours of the night and not getting enough sleep ourselves. We have to be models of that for them.

Lisa Lewis  

Absolutely. And the tech use piece is an issue for adults too. It has just grown exponentially. I mean, it’s so quaint to think that I used to hand in handwritten book reports when I was in school. So we know our teens are online for homework, but then also they’re online for social media. As adults, they see us scrolling on our phones, looking at the news or whatever we are doing, and so modeling that good behavior can be a challenge, and yet is so important. And there are some really good common sense guidelines in terms of setting house rules for tech. Things like charging all devices outside of the bedrooms, meaning not just the teenager devices, but the parents too. Somewhere like the kitchen. So something like that. The official recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics is no tech use an hour before bedtime. So knowing that and then putting that into action, that does really help. And that actually gets to another point that I get into a lot in the book, which is the importance of having a wind down routine before sleep. This was a great tip. I talked to one of the sleep experts who actually is a sleep coach for professional athletes. This is part of what she recommends to them. And it is because our brains are not like computers, we don’t just turn them off and boom, hit the pillow and go to sleep, you need a transition. And especially as parents, back to the six-year-olds or even younger, we used to have these elaborate routines to help them prepare for bed. So thank goodness, it doesn’t have to be quite that elaborate anymore, but it is that sense of a transition period, and it helps you just kind of shift into “Oh, I’m getting ready for bed.” And whatever that ends up being, whether it’s reading a book or taking a bath, it’s looking at things like the lighting in your home, dimming the lights, but having some sort of sequence of things that you do that are not working still on your computer, or being embroiled in social media, but something that helps you make that transition into sleep.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Well, yeah, because the two big things there that I see, I mean, this happens for adults too, for sure, but with teens, when they’re using their devices, even if it’s for something, “productive”, like homework or whatever, when they’re using those right up until they try to go to bed, number one, the light exposure from that dampens down their melatonin response and then makes it harder for them to fall asleep. But I also find for them, that the emotional stimulation of it is really a problem, because they’re scrolling, they’re responding to texts or snaps, or watching videos, whether it’s funny or dramatic, or there’s drama with a friend or whatever, that is stimulating, not only visually, but also emotionally. That gets their thoughts going. And then they tried to go to sleep. And it’s like now there are 18 million anxieties in their head about “Is so and so going to respond to my texts overnight, what if I miss it?”, or “This thing happened”, and they’re thinking about it. And what teens report to me so much around the device stuff is they use it right up until they try to fall asleep, and so it’s stimulating them and they can’t fall asleep, but also the piece of them having these devices in their room at night, their sleep is being disrupted. They’re waking up, maybe to just use the restroom quick, and under ordinary circumstances would fall right back to sleep at 2am. But the phone’s right there, so they grab it, and it’s like two hours later, they’ve been embroiled in whatever and lost that sleep, which I think is such an important point you made about devices outside the room at night. It is a hard and fast rule in my family and a hard and fast rule with every family that comes into our clinic: No devices in the bedroom at night. I say to parents: Nothing good happens on the internet for your kids in the middle of the night, literally nothing. And they’re going to lose sleep over it, too. And so I’m really glad that you addressed those simple things that we can be doing there, because I think, again, it’s sort of low hanging fruit, right? It’s stuff that maybe parents aren’t thinking about. But oh, these are some simple changes that will help ensure that their teens are getting better sleep.

Lisa Lewis  

Absolutely. And one of the things that I found surprising, actually, when I was delving into the research, specifically about tech, was that all of the different ways that tech and social media use affects sleep, that blue light is one of the factors, as you mentioned, because it can suppress melatonin, but from experts I spoke with, that seems to be the least of the three main ways that it affects sleep, because to your point, it’s sleep displacement. If you are on your devices in the middle of the night, you are cutting into your sleep time. And it’s the fact that they’re stimulating and engaging. The thing is, though, we sort of have to step back and remember: All of these tech devices and these apps and everything we are using, they were designed to be deliberately immersive. So it is really hard. We get sucked in because they want us to get sucked in. Our teens are not just being stubborn. I mean, every single thing, the fact that social media has likes and all that, those feed into their need for rewards. Same thing with video games. You are leveling up, you are doing all that stuff. Even TV, it is now so easy to binge because you will watch an episode, it ends, and then it just automatically segues into the next one. It’s all designed to keep us sucked in as long as possible. So it really is a difficult situation that we are in, and so even if you do happen to still have devices in your home, at the very least, turn off notifications. You do not need to get a little “bing” every time something happens.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Well, and I think your point is a great one, that it’s really an unrealistic expectation that kids at that phase of their development won’t get sucked in. I have parents who say, “Oh my kid is responsible, my kid doesn’t…”, first of all, it has nothing to do with whether your kid’s responsible or not, it’s exactly as you are saying: They’re designed this way. And kids don’t necessarily realize the impact of that. And so we need to guide them in ways that set them up for success, and one of those ways is just not even having the device in there. Kids will say to me, “I need it for my alarm.” And I say, Well, I’m old. And when I grew up, we didn’t have phones for an alarm. And guess what? For $10, you can still go down to Target and get an old fashioned alarm clock and use that”, and it’s true. Parents laugh about it, but that’s what needs to be happening, because I’ll tell you, the number of teens that we are seeing now in the clinic, and have for years, but it just continues to escalate, with significant symptoms of depression, of mood dysregulation, of eating disorders, anxiety disorders, OCD, suicidality, you name it, and sleep is an underlying factor for almost all of them. Now, that’s not to say that sleep problems cause all those things. But here’s what we do know from the research: When we improve sleep, symptoms do improve. There may need to be other things too, but you are not going to get very far with those symptoms if your kid is perpetually sleep deprived. So it’s just really important to think about this stuff.

Lisa Lewis  

Yeah, you are exactly right, that sleep exacerbates so many of those symptoms, and you do have to address that piece in addition to all the other things that are going on.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

I want to make sure that we circle back to this issue of school start time. You were really involved in the initiative around this in California, you are passionate about this. We have talked about some of the obstacles to kids getting good sleep, family routines, homework, screen time, all of these things, but one of the obstacles really is this issue of the fact that the schedule with school dictates so much. So I’m sure that we have parents listening who are like, “Huh, I never really thought that that was even something that could be up for discussion, let alone that an entire state would be changing that.” I know we have a lot of parents in our listening audience who are fierce advocates for their kids, who get involved with these things, and are probably wondering, “Lisa, how did you do this? How can I start this conversation? Who do I go to at the school? I feel like this is important. Boy, this is resonating. I’m living this with my kids every morning, trying to get them out the door. How do we start with this in our local areas?”

Lisa Lewis  

So what I did in my local community when I first realized this was an issue, and I started gathering information, one of the first resources that I identified is a terrific group called Start School Later, they are a national nonprofit, and I started my own local chapter. So what was terrific about that is there have been districts and communities around the country that have already done this, probably hundreds, the issue is there’s no central database, so I can’t give you an exact number. So up until now, it has been happening in all these different communities. The issue is it’s been happening on a patchwork basis, which is why I do believe ultimately having it happen at a statewide level is the most effective way to do it. And particularly, when you think about the fact that teen sleep deprivation is a public health issue, and other things like asbestos and lead paint, we don’t leave to local communities.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

That’s right. We don’t let our local school districts decide if they want to have asbestos in their buildings, we have rules about such things, right?

Lisa Lewis  

Well, and yet the push back in California was from groups that wanted it left to local control. However, we have seen, not enough local groups have done it, or we wouldn’t be in this situation. But in those various communities that have changed start times, which range from a single high school to an entire city like the city of Seattle, in so many cases, parent advocates have played a key role. Students have too, actually. There are several really, really inspiring stories where students have led the charge. So what I recommend is that if you are a parent in a district and your school is starting at, say, 7:30, in the morning, like mine was, first of all, know that the official recommendation is 8:30. And you probably will find other like-minded parents. I know I certainly did here, that it was sort of this issue everyone was quietly coping with. So the first thing is reach out and find other like-minded parents, consider starting a chapter because I did find Start School Later to be a tremendous resource. And in fact, because I had started a local chapter, when our state senator started looking into the issue, reached out to Start School Later, they in turn got him in touch with all of us who were local chapter leaders in the state, which is how I got sucked into the whole legislative process. But really starting a conversation about it, you may find your local PTA is very amenable to this. In California, the California State PTA signed on as a cosponsor because they recognize the role that sleep plays in health and wellbeing. So starting a conversation, helping others in your community understand just these basics that, yes, teens do need 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Yes, there are recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and signed on to by every other medical group, that schools should start no earlier than 8:30. Helping people understand, as we were talking about, the fact that teens do have this circadian rhythm shifts. So they’re not being lazy, they can’t fall asleep until later in the evening. And when they start early, it is literally cutting into their sleep. And most probably it’s cutting into their REM sleep, because that’s backloaded, so more of it happens during the second half of the night. But starting a conversation, gathering like-minded parents. I will say, though, as part of that, it does also really help if you can identify a parent who also happens to be a medical expert or somebody who has some expertise in that area, or bringing in someone of that type in your community. Because I will say, when I first started these conversations in my district, they saw me as just a parent, and they really were not inclined to move forward with it, necessarily. I ended up not continuing to pursue it on the local level, because I did have another parent who was a neurologist, who I was talking to, who was going to start coming in with me, and she and I had already been discussing this, but I ended up shifting my attentions to the statewide effort, which ended up playing out in a way that ultimately did help my district too.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

You just went through the whole state, you were like “Enough of messing around with this district, we are just going for the whole state”. And as you said, there was sort of a confluence of events that came together that allowed that to happen, but I think the important takeaway for all of you listening, is this does often start with one or two parents advocating at a local level. I know parents who have started with the principal at their child’s school, have started with the superintendent, who have gone and used time during school board meetings to educate the school board about it. You can get on the agenda for that if you are in a public school, and even private schools. There are boards, there are administrators, and so start the conversation with them. And hey, if you are into it on a more macro level or if you have connections, start the conversation at the city or the state level. If people in city or state government, if you have connections there, if you can work with medical professionals who maybe have some connections, do that. Because to your point, I think while it’s awesome, all the individual districts and cities that have done it, one of the benefits of doing it statewide when we think about things like athletics and those things, is all the kids in the state in these sports conferences are all on the same schedules, then, as far as when they’re getting out of school, when they’re having practices, and so certainly there are some benefits there. But even starting with a conversation at your child’s school, and just educating people around this, I think is a great starting point.

Lisa Lewis  

Yeah, that’s a good point. And when it does happen at a statewide levels, as you mentioned, that does take one of the key issues that come up out of the equation, which is the issue of sports. That being said though, every district around the country that has shifted has had to address this sports piece. So it is never unique to this one specific school that’s looking at making the change. And what they do is the practices shift back accordingly and they make some adjustments. In districts where they’ve done studies on this, though, they have found that participation in athletics did not go down when they shifted school start times. Similarly, student’s ability to hold after school jobs did not change when they shifted. So these things that come up, they just adjust. And again, we sort of have to keep in mind why we are doing it, which is for our students’ wellbeing. That’s the whole point of why they’re in school. We want them to be there and awake and alert and ready to learn, because that’s the whole reason they’re in school. They’re not in school as a training ground to go be a pro athlete.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

That’s right. And I think also, beyond the very real learning and academic pieces. And by the way there’s research that shows that academic performance improves, that behavior in school improves when we make these changes. We talked about the public safety issues with accidents and things like that. But one of the things that is so in the public dialogue right now is around mental health. And again, as we have touched on, if we want to talk about escalating levels of mental health problems in teens, this needs to be part of the conversation. And so this may be a good time to start raising some of these concerns at your local or state level, because this issue of rampant mental health problems for youth is very much on people’s radar, and people are looking at solutions that they can implement to help with that. 

And I think this is a great time as we are wrapping up here, to mention your book because you literally have written the book on this topic, and I think it’s such a tremendous resource for parents, or even for all of our educators listening. I didn’t mention that, but to all of you who are educators in the audience, and I know there’s lots of you, this may have your wheels turning about wanting to really push the dialogue forward in your building or your district, so please, not just for parents, for all of you. This book, Lisa, is a tremendous resource for people wanting to advocate, because you have really compiled the scientific data as well as expert opinions of things into one place that people can learn and understand more about this.

Lisa Lewis  

Thank you. Yeah what I did because I am a parent, is I ended up writing the book that I wished I had when my oldest was starting high school. Because I did want to pull in the information, the science. What happens when we sleep? What’s happening to our teens in terms of brain development during adolescence? And then looking at all of these very important ways in which our teens are affected when they’re sleep deprived. So the drowsy driving, the mental health, the athletics, in the classroom, even. And you mentioned teachers. There were several teachers I spoke with who talked about how difficult it is when you are teaching a 7:30am class. How to keep kids engaged. And then really wanting to give parents and educators too, information about how to make changes in their schools, in terms of bringing about the conversation about school start times, but then looking at some of these other areas, like we talked about, technology and other kind of best practices in the home, because there really are a lot of things that we can do to help, and it’s so needed, especially now.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Awesome. So the book is called The Sleep Deprived Teen: Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired and How Parents and Schools Can Help Them Thrive. You gave us a great intro and summary of that, I want people to delve into the book more. Tell us where people can find the book. I know it’s out now, it just came out a couple weeks ago. So tell everybody where they can find it, and also where they can find out more about you and your work around these topics.

Lisa Lewis  

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah, so the book is The Sleep Deprived Teen. It is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, bookshop.org. I do have a website, I use my middle initials. So it’s lisallewis.com. So you can find out more about me, more about the book, I’ve got all the little links for buying it, but I do really hope that this can be a resource for parents. And I really hope it can help all of our teens.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

Absolutely. I think it’s a tremendous resource. Thank you for taking the time to write it, and for being here today to share it with all of us. I know you have inspired a lot of people listening to not only think about this in their own homes, but even to think about it more broadly with advocacy in their school districts and beyond. So thank you for being here.

Lisa Lewis  

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about sleep.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens  

And thanks, as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We will catch you back here next time.