Newer research indicates that in puberty, teens internal clocks shift the time for optimal sleep later into night. This shift in teens’ internal clocks makes it so that it’s hard for teens to fall asleep before 11 o’clock, according to Science Daily. Teens generally start school earlier in the morning than their younger counterparts, and the outcome, a new study claims, is cranky, moody, sleep-deprive teens who behave poorly.

A paper published in the journal of Learning, Media and Technology blames teen misbehaving out of exhaustion rather than laziness, hormones, or bad attitudes. The research exposed negative consequences of sleep-deprivation associated with early start times for teens in school. Later bells, the article suggests, leads to teens learning more effectively, exhibiting better behavior, and having better health.

“Our ability to function optimally [and learn], varies with biological time rather than conventional social times,” the research team explained. According to the journal article, social times and biological times are better aligned during elementary school years.

For teens, the conflict between the social and biological time is greater than at any time during a human’s lifespan, the researchers claim.

“Our sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, is the result of a complex balance between states of alertness and sleepiness regulated by a part of the brain called Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SNC); in puberty, shifts in our body clocks push optimal sleep later into the evening, making it extremely difficult for most teenagers to fall asleep before 11.00pm,” the article in Science Daily explained. “This, coupled with early school starts in the morning, results in chronically sleep-deprived and cranky teens as well as plummeting grades and health problems.”

According to the journal article, studies of later start times for teens have consistently reported benefits while there is no evidence that early start times help teens behave, learn, or grow.

“In spite of examples corroborating this theory — crucial is the case of the United States Air Force Academy where a later start policy has been instrumental in trumpeting the marks of a group of 18-19 year olds — educators still fail to grasp it’s not laziness that keeps teens in bed in the morning but their biological clocks,” the Science Daily article explained, adding that the Start School Later campaign and National Sleep Foundation both lobby for better sleep situations to improve the way teens behave, learn, and stay healthy.

“Good policies should be based on good evidence and the data show that children are currently placed at an enormous disadvantage by being forced to keep inappropriate education times,” the team of researchers implored, according to Routledge, which appealed to parents’ and educators’ desire to see teens behave better and to help them take notice of a growing body of evidence about teens’ biological clocks.

[Photo by mrehan]