21 ms·

Let Teenagers Sleep In

450 points by anoplus 8y ago

shawn 8y ago
Or better yet, bring back apprenticeship and give them something to do other than worthless high school. I almost didn't get my first programming job because I had to be paid under the table at 17 due to child labor laws. If you want to enrich teenagers' lives, offering them something other than a prison sentence where kids ruthlessly torment each other seems a decent way. It worked for most of history.
- renjimen 8y ago
  Each to their own. An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. But you're right, for vocational training where you learn by doing having the option of an apprenticeship may be far more fruitful than staying in school. I believe Germany has this kind of system.
  - adamnemecek 8y ago
    There are apprenticeships for programming and electrical engineering.
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Can you link to the electrical engineering apprenticeship? To confirm the obvious you don’t mean an electrician apprenticeship, right? Edit: Never mind Electrical Engineering https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektrotechniker/ https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektrotechniker/ Electrician https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektroniker/ https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektroniker/
      - namibj 8y ago
        You seem to mix them up. Elektrik == Big motors, house wiring etc. Elektronik == vacuum tubes or semiconductors in circuits
  - earthnail 8y ago
    German here. We have this kind of system, and it works extremely well for most professions that don’t require a master’s degree, and where the field doesn’t change too quickly. It is a mix of school and apprenticeship. Great, for example, for becoming a nurse, less great for programming since the field moves so fast. For higher education, we still have the old school university system. Students usually leave university with little industry experience beyond a few internships, but especially the technical universities put a lot of focus on preparing their students as well as possible for the real world. All in all it works quite well.
    - bosie 8y ago
      Not sure why it wouldn't work for "fast" changing fields like programming as well. The basics are the basics. Learn the basics at school and the day-to-day activities through the apprenticeship? Not sure what else would be better than the dual-system
      - earthnail 8y ago
        It‘s just an observation. The apprenticeship system stems from the old guilds. There is no support yet for learning programming that way. It will take a while, the system evolves very slowly.
        detaro 8y ago
        You can become a web designer/developer through apprenticeship at least. And there's the "dual studium" ideas that at least follow a similar model in some ways, which a bunch of large technical companies offer.
  - StreakyCobra 8y ago
    Switzerland is "kind of" a famous for his apprenticeship system. I myself went trough an apprenticeship, and that didn't prevented me to get a University Master's degree later on. A random web search gave me this relatively recent article [1] presenting it. It says that 2/3 of students goes through apprenticeship: «In Switzerland, two-thirds of students in the final stage of secondary education opt for vocational training, mostly in three or four year “dual” programmes combining classroom study with workplace training.» [1] https://www.ft.com/content/98e06036-d99b-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 https://www.ft.com/content/98e06036-d99b-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b...
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    > An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. Do you have any evidence for that or is it an assertion? I feel very confident that the top decile of those who complete an apprenticeship as a Chenistry lab tech or as a Computer Programmer could go straight into a UK doctoral programme. If the proportion of academically inclined entrants increased so would the proportion capable. I’m sure they’d have massive gaps in their knowledge compared to those who went through a theory focused Bachelor’s but you learn plenty of theory with one to two days a week of class and you can apply it immediately so you’re going to remember it. On a more Anglophone note lambda school seem to be doing great at training web programmers and data scientists in six months of full time project based work. It’s not an apprenticeship but it looks a lot more like it than any university.
  - captainmuon 8y ago
    > An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. At the university, we actually had a very successful internship program for high school students (in particle physics). It turns out there is a lot you can learn by "learning by doing". Also the actual day-to-day work of a master or PhD student is not too different from an apprentice in crafts - but very different from a school or univerity student. You learn by being embedded in a working group and performing actual work, instead of only sitting in class and learning from books.
- fiblye 8y ago
  School's purpose is to introduce kids to things they otherwise wouldn't have a chance to learn. Coming from a poor, working class family, an apprenticeship-driven society like those of centuries ago would've resulted in me being trapped doing back-breaking labor and having no chance to escape. But I got a chance to study tech and other languages, got interested in things my family could never understand, and moved to another country to pursue what made me happy. I think offering a choice of apprenticeships would be good, but discouraging schooling in any way in favor of them would lead back to cycles of poverty and and end to the upward movement we've seen in the past century with the introduction of widespread public education.
  - shawn 8y ago
    Meanwhile in Ameriburger, the kids tear each other to shreds. It sounds like the educational opportunities you got were what I spent years fantasizing about, wondering if there was anything better than going from mostly-dead teacher to mostly-dead teacher and forced to memorize pointless geographical facts in exchange for ... nothing at all, as far as I could tell.
    - fiblye 8y ago
      I went to a school in America at a school where fights happened at least weekly. I still took advantage of what I was offered.
      - shawn 8y ago
        Yes, an environment where prisoners fight other prisoners sounds much preferable to learning a trade. Anyway, the mods have deemed "thou shalt only post five comments every three hours," so... See you tomorrow. Also the right teacher can make all the difference. Telling victims "Shut up and deal with it" isn't too productive, though it's the usual advice. EDIT: Since I can't reply, I'll just post it here. You'd be surprised. Economic activity is the only reason we don't resort to violence on a daily basis. Giving kids something to do other than posture might go a long way. Woo, replying via edit is fun. I wonder how long I can troll the HN mods before all my comments drop to the bottom automatically again. After all, when no justification is given and your emails are ignored, why obey arbitrary rules or put in effort toward being a good community member? EDIT2: Hmm, if I implied manual labor, I didn't mean to. A programming apprenticeship would have been amazing, and most trades are becoming knowledge-based anyway. Even a mechanic is less manual labor and more creative diagnostic.
- captainmuon 8y ago
  In practice, apprenticeship/traineeship starts too late. As you said, there should be something like it during / instead of high school, not after high school. We had an apprentice at work (in Germany) who was going to a Waldorf school I think. They do a half-year apprenticeship as opposed to three weeks as the others do.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
coding123 8y ago
Or you know have them go to bed at 10 instead of let the play video games until 2am.
- Coding_Cat 8y ago
  Teenagers natural sleeping cycle is markedly later than any other age bracket. When I was one, I wasn't allowed to play any videogames past 20:30, and I would often spend the evening reading books by a nightlight. Everyday I cycled for almost 2 hours (at ~20-25 kmh), so I got some regular exercise each day too. Nevertheless, I would still on occasion go to bed at 10:30 (had to get up at 6:30) and lie awake in bed till 01:00-02:00am.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    Would that still be the case in the middle of winter, when it gets dark at 5:00 PM?
    - GordonS 8y ago
      Not the parent, but I grew up in the North of Scotland where it gets dark between 4-5pm for several months of each year, and as a teenager I could never sleep before 1-2am. I was always forced to get up early, which of course resulted in me being extremely tired during the day, which negatively impacted upon my life (academically, relationships etc). Seems like there has to be a better way.
    - kpil 8y ago
      According to studies made in UK that I'm too lazy to find; yes. It's dark in the morning too, maybe going to school before dawn is the major problem, given that the schools are closed in the summer. I've heard of doctors prescribing melatonine, which is absurd when the problem basically is cultural.
    - fulafel 8y ago
      It is the case further north too, where winter daylight is 0-3 hours.
captainmuon 8y ago
Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they are hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time. I think it would make much more sense to change the content of school during those years to reflect the interests of students better. Let them take a break, do something practical, do projects, etc. instead of trying to cram facts into their heads. A lot of stuff I headed to learn when I was 13 I learned easily 5 years later, and vice versa.
- YokoZar 8y ago
  > Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they are hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time. They literally are. And that time is later than adults. That's what circadean rhythms are.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    If this difference exceeds two hours, they have a problem.
    - YokoZar 8y ago
      That difference may be delayed sleep phase syndrome, which affects about 1 in 7 teens. You can mitigate it around the edges with sleep hygiene, but even doing everything correctly they're still going to behind adults with earlier chronotypes.
- robofd 8y ago
  Agreed, but not everyone will take time to learn things later on. IMO, general level of education is important to fostering future curiosities.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  That they are "hardcoded" in this way is one of the major points of this piece. Changing the curriculum, whatever its merits or demerits, is not going to result in fewer teens dying in car crashes.
rerx 8y ago
One of the many fascinating facts I learnt from Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" is that the biorhythms of teenagers are shifted to later hours compared to those of adults in all human cultures of the globe, even in those rare societies hardly affected by technology. In evolution this was likely beneficial to make it easier for teenagers to socialize among themselves without adult disturbance, which was necessary to drive their tribe out of its ruts, to pioneer innovation and adaptation to changed conditions. In modern society we are stupid to undermine this by depriving the upcoming generation of their sleep.
- sigi45 8y ago
  Interesting idea :)
- darkerside 8y ago
  Just as likely that teenagers would then be able to stand watch for predators, attacks by other tribes, or hunt for nocturnal prey.
  - rerx 8y ago
    Sure, having some variation in circadian rhythms among the members of a group makes it easier to have guards at most times of day and night. But such variation exists independently of age: There are "owls" and "larks" at all stages of life. I find it interesting that, on top of that, teenagers specifically and consistently have their individual rhythms shifted towards the later hours.
    - darkerside 8y ago
      That's a really interesting point I hadn't considered. And thanks to evolution's pseudorandom algorithm, it could be that the benefit was obtained in conjunction with another benefit (nighttime socializing), that one came about after the other, or that one exists and one doesn't.
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    Can the purpose of this mechanism not be determined by observing hunter gatherers?
QML 8y ago
I wonder if it'd just be easier for high schools to convert over to a college model: students are free to pick courses corresponding to their preferred times, and to leave and enter campus on will. Of course, there will be incentives to consider -- why would a high schooler attend their classes if they're not paying directly out of pocket? In contrast, a school district would try to maximize the attendance rate as that's how funding works (at least in California). In hindsight, there's always a tension between high schoolers and those who administrate them; it's never a partnership since teenagers are quick to abuse / misuse a privilege.
- rjbwork 8y ago
  Drastically reduce administrators. Give the kids something like 25 to 50 cents per class attended.
  - annywhey 8y ago
    Honestly, direct pay for attendance would be a great incentive for the poorest demographics. A few dollars can be make-or-break at the margin and even greedy parents that misuse the funds would end up wanting to get the kid showing up and not getting in fights - the bare minimum for a school day to go by undisturbed.
    - zo1 8y ago
      I'd be all for that, as long as there were negative penalties as well. E.g. Disturbing class = no points. Failing homework = no points. Failing test = losing all accumulated points. Failing end of year exams for the subject = lose all money for that subject. I.e. Attendance is only part of the equation, actually fostering learning/growth is what you really want, even if it's semi-artificial. Otherwise you're just making another perverse incentive for kids to keep their butts in the seat and not really engage. And then further on, only give the money back in the subsequent year, month to month. Make it a long-term commitment with a pay-off.
      - philwelch 8y ago
baxtr 8y ago
That’s probably a good reason to stick to wintertime in winter and not summertime (the EU decided to drop time ch ages 2x a year)
- vinay427 8y ago
  There isn't even a definite proposition yet for eliminating DST shifts. There is still a long way ahead for something like this to happen.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    Half of my last year is dealing with bugs related to dst. It needs to go away completely. It is a stupid and unnecessary concept. The proposition is very simple "we won't be shifting the clock by an hour, deal with it"
    - wruza 8y ago
      If paid, half of your year may be worth having dst, if it turns out to be important. Hope they make their best decision, since it may affect too many things. Btw, did you deal with it or it’s still a mess? Long ago I wrote a library that manages dst, leaps, even ancient calendar changes, for fun. Datetime is hard topic, but still manageable. What problems did you meet, specifically?
      - paulie_a 8y ago
        No it wasn't worth it. I'd rather work on actual projects instead of fixing undocumented nuances related to poorly implemented systems. Yes I got paid for it, I'd rather not deal with a never ending set of database queries in a legacy system. Specifically one problem was consistently being given incorrect info from a vendor, then incorrect specs and data that would not match with the first. How do you compare a day with 25 vs 24 hours. Tldr: fuck dst, it has no purpose and should go away.
emodendroket 8y ago
> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and extracurricular clubs. Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is also a big reason for the low rate of young people having children commentators like to wring their hands about.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  >Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I've always been under the impression that start times were staggered for transportation reasons, as you can't drop everyone off at the same time. My experiences are limited to small towns, so I could be way off, but the differences seemed too small for sibling care to be the motive
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    That means you have to do some kind of staggering. But the order is always older-younger, although younger kids are naturally awake earlier.
    - astura 8y ago
      The order is not always older-younger. That has not been my experience.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      So I looked at the CDC paper that seems to have influenced this article[1], the average start time for middle school is 8:04, and for high school 7:59. Elementary schools weren't sampled in it. A later journal article just sampling Kentucky[2] shows elementary starting at 8:05, middle at 8:00, and high school at 8:0:1. Elementary is also the most likely to start before 8, but their average was raised by ten percent starting after 9. There doesn't seem to be any forced order currently, and you'd likely see younger students get later starts as well. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm [2]https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start-times https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start....
another-cuppa 8y ago
But maybe not too much? My parents let me sleep. School started at 9:00 for me but on weekends and holidays I would sleep for more than ten hours and default to a >24 hour circadian rhythm. I would eventually become completely nocturnal which is kinda funny and considered typical for a geek like me, but it really messed up my mental health for a number of years afterwards. I wasn't able to maintain "normal" sleeping patterns until my late 20s.
unhammer 8y ago
I highly recommend the interview with "sleep diplomat" Matt Walker at http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker – I was scared into going to bed early at least :-)
lordnacho 8y ago
This teenager sleep cycle thing is a bit of a revelation to me. I thought I just had bad habits, but when I was that age, I'd play games most of the evening, maybe do one or two bits of homework at 10om, and then possibly stay up to 1am with some essay that I'd procrastinate on for ages. I'd wake up at something like 7am and sleep on the train until I got into school, and then sleep after getting home at about 4pm for an hour or two. It would have been a lot more comfortable getting in for maybe 10am and leaving at 5pm. I remember sometimes you'd have a special day in the week where there were no classes in the morning, meaning you started late. And then maybe an extra lesson or activity in the evening. But similar length of day, shifted, felt much better. Having worked for longer than I went to school for now, I think the school calendar needs an overhaul. There's no reason to take a huge holiday in the summer. In fact, why have any holiday at all? Just have school on all the time, and let people take holidays whenever they want, like at work. You won't forget things as easily taking week or two week holidays as against 8 week ones. Also it means parents won't have their holidays dictated by the school. Within the day, I also wonder about the frequency of context switches. You might be taking 6 classes a day: PE, French, Math, English, History, Physics. Now image you are coding, and you do this: Troubleshoot the rendering issue on the website, install a lock free ring on your trading system, write a SIMD function in CUDA, fix your cmake file dependencies, add unit tests to your CI script, and set up Kubernetes. Would you do those things one at a time, or in little pieces where you have to pick up where you left off arbitrarily? It seems you should have large blocks, maybe just morning and afternoon, rather than dozens of little classes each week. But then possibly as a teenager concentration is an issue, I don't know. I certainly think it's better to focus on one thing at a time, quite a long time, before changing contexts.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  Same thing when I was having massive sleep issues with years of constantly having symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation. Turned out I just had a condition called ‘delayed sleep phase disorder’. Being diagnosed and reading about sleep cycles was also a bit of a revelation to me. DSPD pretty much just means that as an adult I have a similar circadian rhythm to an adeloscent. As soon as I started regularly getting up at around 10am instead of 7-8am and just going to bed when I felt tired, all the symptoms disappeared, with no meds or anything. It’s lucky that I have a flexible workplace and a supervisor who has a kid with a sleep disorder, because the hardest thing about having this disorder is that it’s so hard for anybody with a normal cycle to understand how inflexible circadian rhythms are. You hear all sorts of BS about “you just need to be more disciplined”, etc. which just doesn’t work.
k__ 8y ago
I still sleep from 03:00 to 12:00 and I'm 33.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Similar here if left to my own devices, and I'm 40. I think we are a minority, though.
  - k__ 8y ago
    On the other hand, this drove me to self-employment, which brings its own benefits, besides sleeping in.
  - Const-me 8y ago
    I'm 36. We aren't necessarily a minority, it's possible most people would do it too if they could.
digitailor 8y ago
Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage was probably not the same as ours. (There is evidence of monogamistic tendencies in humans for a long time but that isn't synonymous with marriage.) Teenagers are biologically wired to want lots of sex and they tend to do it at night. I would put a lot of money on the fact that that hasn't changed in millennia. Obviously, this is a critical aspect of the process that allows for the continuation of the human race. Humans didn't have the consistent ability to wait to reproduce until 30 as is common now. And probably not the desire too; I can't see career-building interfering. The initial party must have ended pretty quickly. Poor ancient teeenagers. (Edit: considering this speculative is reasonable and factually correct. But speculating there's been behavior change is currently more speculative. What reason do we have to think teens had daytime sex in ancient times and our behavior has changed? What about for mature adults? Never heard of an existing tribal culture that mostly has sex during the day, and that's how we get much of our anthropological evidence. Humans tend to have sex at night, and the most fertile, desirious and energetic would be wired to spend more time at the time people have sex doing it: that would be selected for because of our primary biological directive. Is there a more logical evolutionary reason?)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- majos 8y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. Yes, adolescence is when childbearing ability and the associated hormonal incentives start, but where is this "sex must happen at night" component coming from? If anything, I would guess that's a modern phenomenon being retrofitted onto the past.
  - digitailor 8y ago
    I'd say visibility, permission avoidance, the excitement, and I'm sure there's more. Just like now, why would it have changed? For what specific reasons? Obviously spring and summer would be easier. I don't think that's retrofitting; I think we're continuing it still and the lack of recognition of that is confusing me. I'm positive they figured out how to have sex in the day as well when possible. But nomadic daytime marching would reduce opportunity, and in a hunting culture it would be harder to separate a woman because of daily gender-disparate activities. In a predominantly gatherer culture, perhaps it was easier.
unit91 8y ago
> Anyone who talks about sleep as if it’s some kind of inconvenience and getting less of it is a virtue should be challenged. These people are dangerous. This statement was bizarrely totalitarian. I actually agree with the fundamental premise that many schools probably start too early. But to say those who take the other side are dangerous people who need to be challenged? Too far. Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous!
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
  > Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous! Every, single social media platform, political show, talk show, no matter the side.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    EconTalk is good about not being like this.
  - unit91 8y ago
    Undisputed and lamentable. I just didn't see it coming in paragraph 2 of a NY Times editorial on teenage sleep habits.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    As Vi Hart explains here[0], it's critical that you establish enemies for your followers if you wish them to crusade for you. Playful banter and "agreeing to disagree" don't cut it. You have to dehumanize them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  In what sense is promoting an idea that leads to worse health outcomes and higher mortality not dangerous?
ricardobeat 8y ago
http://archive.is/ulQnm http://archive.is/ulQnm
speleding 8y ago
My daughter's school just changed all lessons to start an hour later for a few cohorts, as an experiment. My daughter likes that she gets to sleep longer. But it also means we don't get to see each other at breakfast, however brief that is. I'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each other will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would be for everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each other will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would be for everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-) As a teenager I would hate you for that :). Part of the reason I seem to be wired for night life since my teenage years is probably because that's the time everyone else is asleep, giving time to think, concentrate, enjoy experiences without interruptions, and generally not be interrupted by other people's random nonsense.
boulos 8y ago
This was actually an opinion piece a while back that seemingly got updated around the actual news [1]: Governor Brown vetoed the bill in California to start at 8:30 AM or later. [1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-time-vetoed-20180921-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-time-...
lngnmn1 8y ago
In asia, especially in rural areas, it is common to wake up early, between 5:30 and 6:00 and do a lot of things, including playing football, before reaching school at 9 am. And, you see, they are perfectly healthy and smart. Of course, almost everyone is going to bed about 9 or 10 pm. Failure to take into account cultural and social differences plague so-called studies all the time. Rice as the cause of health problems is another example. Almost 2/3 of humanity consume rice on a daily basis, sometimes few times per day.
RoutinePlayer 8y ago
F*ck that. What's next? Let them do cocaine!? [joke]
noobermin 8y ago
>Three out of every four students in grades 9 to 12 fail to sleep the minimum of eight hours that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for their age group Do 3/4 teens fail in life? Do they develop debilitating disorders and such? I guess I've heard for years we need more sleep yet we don't sleep and we continue living. May be certain things like stress and work are troublesome and such but that seems more like the issue than lack of sleep is.
- yurishimo 8y ago
  It’s not necessarily that they become failures but rather that they are being deprived of the mental capacity to reach their full potential every day. They would be more successful if they got more sleep, so it makes sense to give teens a couple more hours to benefit society as a whole, even if only marginally.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    I don't think my point is clear so let me restate it. 75% is a majority of people. 75% of people aren't deficient in some way, as far as I know, staying up all night as teens and living a life didn't make them maladjusted or deprived in some sense. Moreover, I don't know or feel like there is evidence that high performers in society sleep more than anyone else. The whole "sleep more" mantra feels like the "eat less fat" mantra of the 90s which turned out to be not only false but detrimental to public health as fat became replaced by sugar.
    - ecnahc515 8y ago
      Just because you can't see if people are drastically affected in ways you perceive; especially years after the fact, doesn't mean it's not affecting people. It's just as possible the "high performers who don't sleep" are the least healthy people in society, and our society rewards unhealthy habits...oh wait...
    - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
      Just because a decision doesn't completely destroy the life of everyone affected does not make it a good decision.
hrasyid 8y ago
I'm not sure I like the reasoning in this article. They go to bed later because of FB and other stuff, which makes them not have enough sleep before school. Then it's the school, rather than the FB-ing that has to give way? If they wake up and start school later, what's to say their FB-ing won't shift even later, causing them to sleep even later, and then again we're back where we started?
- ttul 8y ago
  Teens ain’t on Facebook in my part of the globe. It’s all Instagram and Snapchat. The latest craze is multiparty live video where a couple of teens will broadcast themselves doing goofy stuff while all their friends watch remotely from their devices. It is a brave new world.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Because teenagers have delayed melatonin release even in controlled lab conditions: http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm
lamontcg 8y ago
I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to bed, early to rise" and flat-out discriminate against people with sleep disorders. If you are an early riser, you should know that as someone with a sleep disorder I view "helpful" suggestions like "get some exercise" to be roughly equivalent to suggesting that gay people just need to pray the gay away. I'm never going to become an early riser. I've gotten in somewhat under control with melatonin, tweaks to diet and consistent scheduling, but I'm never going to hop out of bed at 6:30am and its always going to take me 2-3 hours to wake up.
- devxpy 8y ago
  THANK YOU
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out at 3:30 rather than 5. Im sure teachers would prefer to be out earlier to be with their families (or to run extracurriculars). There is no solution that fits everyone so adjustments need to be made by eveybody.
  - stormbrew 8y ago
    GP pretty much answered your question in the part of the quote you cut off.
  - lamontcg 8y ago
    You literally failed to read every other word that I wrote.
nicolashahn 8y ago
My high school started at 7:45am, unless I had zero period, in which case it was 7am. Throughout the entire four years I was there, I was never able to get my sleep schedule to match up. I would wake up at 6am groggy, irritable, and stupid. This would not change throughout the day, and I'm sure many people thought I was just an idiotic asshole all the time. Sometimes I could catch a nap at lunch. After school, I would immediately pass out for 2-3 hours, and wake with tons of energy. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until around 2am because of this, and then the cycle continued. Now as an engineer with a much more flexible schedule that lets me sleep in, I'm a more attentive, happier, and smarter. I'm convinced that if I had gone to a school with a schedule that matched mine, I would have achieved much more.
butterfi 8y ago
This is nothing new. What's more irritating to me is that these articles generate lots of conversation, but not one school will adjust its hours. Put up or shut up.
- lilgreenland 8y ago
  They passed a law in CA a few weeks ago. All urban public schools must begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB328 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
  - boulos 8y ago
    Yes, but then it was vetoed. See my other commment, or follow your link and click on status to see the Governor’s Veto Message.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  Well, you're assuming that just because we think it might be better for the kids, we should automatically do it. Everything is a compromise, including school scheduling. In particular, for any households where both parents work, shifting school hours could be a serious burden. Easy for those of us who work in an office with a flexible schedule, or have a stay-at-home mom/dad, but we're in the minority.
vm 8y ago
School starts early because of parent work schedules.
pimmen 8y ago
I'm an early riser, always has been. My brother and mother are night owls but I somehow got my father's gene for getting up very early in the morning. All through high school I had a long walk to the train and had to get up at 6. I don't think I was ever late because of my tardiness. Today when I get to work at 8.30 I've already done my workout and some work on hobby stuff. This has been the case since my early 20s. On the flip side, staying up late at night is absolutely horrible. I love hackathons and have been to three of them with my colleagues this year and I'm always such a buzz kill when I have to get some sleep past midnight. I wake up and a lot of the best code has already been written by them. We're all different. I wish society was more adapted to people of all configurations, with more adaptable work schedules. And party schedules, even though missing out on them is not as bad as all the ways night owls are judged as lazy by ignorant people.
upveto 8y ago
This rings so true to me. Throughout high school I had the worst attendance record in the entire grade. For a few days after having stayed home, though, I was much sharper than the other sleepy kids. Then I started to feel tired again. Come on.
DenisM 8y ago
I was in a boarding school with hundreds of other teenagers. My classmates never* slept in (always attended the first class), and I’ve never seen anyone sleeping in from other classes/groups. We went to classes and were in a good shape, I don’t recall anyone complaining. There was one exception - a classmate that I believe was secretely drinking alcohol. Even for him it was an exception to sleep in. Also I’ve see the monitor looking for the sleepers, like that guy, so the problem was not entirely unknown. We were not selected based on our sleep, but on academic performance. This was long ago and we were poor enough to allow no electronic devices whatsoever, alcohol was forbidden, and lights-out were strictly enforced. Not much spare food either after dinner. The “teenage owl” thing has to be almost entirely environmental in order to explain my experience.
- Zak 8y ago
  What were the consequences (both formal and informal) if a student slept in? People can do things that are both unpleasant and harmful to them for extended periods of time if subjected to sufficient coercion, social pressure, or reward.
  - DenisM 8y ago
    No one ever complained about poor performance due to lack of sleep the way modern-day "owls" do. I don't think it matters how they (we) were forced to observe the regime, only that it yielded the result - lark sleep and good performance for near 100% of students. My point is that the "owl" thing is environmental. To answer your question, tardy students would be admonished by the teacher/supervisor/monitor and possible written up. After several incidents (and several escalation layers in between) they would be expelled. Never happened in practice.
    - pseudalopex 8y ago
      You didn't mention when you woke up or when classes started. An hour can make a world of difference. Selection based on academic performance usually means above-average intelligence, which is still an asset when you're tired. It also means you were selected partly based on how well you dealt with your previous schools' start times. You mentioned this was long ago. The subject is better studied now and people are more aware of it. Even still, a lot of people insist it's a matter of discipline. Would it have been socially acceptable for someone to complain about it publicly or even among their friends? Did most have anything to compare it to?
golemiprague 8y ago
They can sleep in as much as they want if they go to sleep in the appropriate time. Teens don't have so much stuff to do, it is just that they want to go to sleep late because they must have just this extra hour of video gaming or texting. It is not really necessary.
topkai22 8y ago
One problem for adults in the US at least, the center of gravity for many institutions is on the East Coast, New York for finance or DC for the government. Huge numbers of people on the west coast start their workday at 6a or 7a to align to accommodate east coast peers or organizations. If the European settlement of the US had been done in reverse, I can easily see a world where Virginians are regularly staying at work till 8p because that’s when their customer is available.
honkycat 8y ago
Schools are daycare and not optimized for the students to learn. That is why they start early: so the parents can go to work
pkelly2505 8y ago
On my way to work today I saw a couple of school buses picking up students at about 6:45. Now if you think that's too early and we should have schools open later, I see a real problem. By law where I live, all traffic, in both directions, has to stop when school buses pick up kids. Put those buses on the road between 8:00 and 9:00 and the already horrible rush hour traffic would get way worse. Along with making everyone's commute longer, every school bus route would take longer. Students would have to be picked up earlier relative to the school's opening time to allow for the slower traffic.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
greggeter 8y ago
Serious question: why don't they just go to bed earlier?

450 points by anoplus 8y ago

Or better yet, bring back apprenticeship and give them something to do other than worthless high school. I almost didn't get my first programming job because I had to be paid under the table at 17 due to child labor laws. If you want to enrich teenagers' lives, offering them something other than a prison sentence where kids ruthlessly torment each other seems a decent way. It worked for most of history.

renjimen 8y ago
Each to their own. An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. But you're right, for vocational training where you learn by doing having the option of an apprenticeship may be far more fruitful than staying in school. I believe Germany has this kind of system.
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  There are apprenticeships for programming and electrical engineering.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Can you link to the electrical engineering apprenticeship? To confirm the obvious you don’t mean an electrician apprenticeship, right? Edit: Never mind Electrical Engineering https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektrotechniker/ https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektrotechniker/ Electrician https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektroniker/ https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/elektroniker/
    - namibj 8y ago
      You seem to mix them up. Elektrik == Big motors, house wiring etc. Elektronik == vacuum tubes or semiconductors in circuits
- earthnail 8y ago
  German here. We have this kind of system, and it works extremely well for most professions that don’t require a master’s degree, and where the field doesn’t change too quickly. It is a mix of school and apprenticeship. Great, for example, for becoming a nurse, less great for programming since the field moves so fast. For higher education, we still have the old school university system. Students usually leave university with little industry experience beyond a few internships, but especially the technical universities put a lot of focus on preparing their students as well as possible for the real world. All in all it works quite well.
  - bosie 8y ago
    Not sure why it wouldn't work for "fast" changing fields like programming as well. The basics are the basics. Learn the basics at school and the day-to-day activities through the apprenticeship? Not sure what else would be better than the dual-system
    - earthnail 8y ago
      It‘s just an observation. The apprenticeship system stems from the old guilds. There is no support yet for learning programming that way. It will take a while, the system evolves very slowly.
      - detaro 8y ago
        You can become a web designer/developer through apprenticeship at least. And there's the "dual studium" ideas that at least follow a similar model in some ways, which a bunch of large technical companies offer.
- StreakyCobra 8y ago
  Switzerland is "kind of" a famous for his apprenticeship system. I myself went trough an apprenticeship, and that didn't prevented me to get a University Master's degree later on. A random web search gave me this relatively recent article [1] presenting it. It says that 2/3 of students goes through apprenticeship: «In Switzerland, two-thirds of students in the final stage of secondary education opt for vocational training, mostly in three or four year “dual” programmes combining classroom study with workplace training.» [1] https://www.ft.com/content/98e06036-d99b-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 https://www.ft.com/content/98e06036-d99b-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b...
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. Do you have any evidence for that or is it an assertion? I feel very confident that the top decile of those who complete an apprenticeship as a Chenistry lab tech or as a Computer Programmer could go straight into a UK doctoral programme. If the proportion of academically inclined entrants increased so would the proportion capable. I’m sure they’d have massive gaps in their knowledge compared to those who went through a theory focused Bachelor’s but you learn plenty of theory with one to two days a week of class and you can apply it immediately so you’re going to remember it. On a more Anglophone note lambda school seem to be doing great at training web programmers and data scientists in six months of full time project based work. It’s not an apprenticeship but it looks a lot more like it than any university.
- captainmuon 8y ago
  > An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under someone more senior. At the university, we actually had a very successful internship program for high school students (in particle physics). It turns out there is a lot you can learn by "learning by doing". Also the actual day-to-day work of a master or PhD student is not too different from an apprentice in crafts - but very different from a school or univerity student. You learn by being embedded in a working group and performing actual work, instead of only sitting in class and learning from books.
fiblye 8y ago
School's purpose is to introduce kids to things they otherwise wouldn't have a chance to learn. Coming from a poor, working class family, an apprenticeship-driven society like those of centuries ago would've resulted in me being trapped doing back-breaking labor and having no chance to escape. But I got a chance to study tech and other languages, got interested in things my family could never understand, and moved to another country to pursue what made me happy. I think offering a choice of apprenticeships would be good, but discouraging schooling in any way in favor of them would lead back to cycles of poverty and and end to the upward movement we've seen in the past century with the introduction of widespread public education.
- shawn 8y ago
  Meanwhile in Ameriburger, the kids tear each other to shreds. It sounds like the educational opportunities you got were what I spent years fantasizing about, wondering if there was anything better than going from mostly-dead teacher to mostly-dead teacher and forced to memorize pointless geographical facts in exchange for ... nothing at all, as far as I could tell.
  - fiblye 8y ago
    I went to a school in America at a school where fights happened at least weekly. I still took advantage of what I was offered.
    - shawn 8y ago
      Yes, an environment where prisoners fight other prisoners sounds much preferable to learning a trade. Anyway, the mods have deemed "thou shalt only post five comments every three hours," so... See you tomorrow. Also the right teacher can make all the difference. Telling victims "Shut up and deal with it" isn't too productive, though it's the usual advice. EDIT: Since I can't reply, I'll just post it here. You'd be surprised. Economic activity is the only reason we don't resort to violence on a daily basis. Giving kids something to do other than posture might go a long way. Woo, replying via edit is fun. I wonder how long I can troll the HN mods before all my comments drop to the bottom automatically again. After all, when no justification is given and your emails are ignored, why obey arbitrary rules or put in effort toward being a good community member? EDIT2: Hmm, if I implied manual labor, I didn't mean to. A programming apprenticeship would have been amazing, and most trades are becoming knowledge-based anyway. Even a mechanic is less manual labor and more creative diagnostic.
captainmuon 8y ago
In practice, apprenticeship/traineeship starts too late. As you said, there should be something like it during / instead of high school, not after high school. We had an apprentice at work (in Germany) who was going to a Waldorf school I think. They do a half-year apprenticeship as opposed to three weeks as the others do.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

coding123 8y ago

Or you know have them go to bed at 10 instead of let the play video games until 2am.

Coding_Cat 8y ago
Teenagers natural sleeping cycle is markedly later than any other age bracket. When I was one, I wasn't allowed to play any videogames past 20:30, and I would often spend the evening reading books by a nightlight. Everyday I cycled for almost 2 hours (at ~20-25 kmh), so I got some regular exercise each day too. Nevertheless, I would still on occasion go to bed at 10:30 (had to get up at 6:30) and lie awake in bed till 01:00-02:00am.
- derekp7 8y ago
  Would that still be the case in the middle of winter, when it gets dark at 5:00 PM?
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Not the parent, but I grew up in the North of Scotland where it gets dark between 4-5pm for several months of each year, and as a teenager I could never sleep before 1-2am. I was always forced to get up early, which of course resulted in me being extremely tired during the day, which negatively impacted upon my life (academically, relationships etc). Seems like there has to be a better way.
  - kpil 8y ago
    According to studies made in UK that I'm too lazy to find; yes. It's dark in the morning too, maybe going to school before dawn is the major problem, given that the schools are closed in the summer. I've heard of doctors prescribing melatonine, which is absurd when the problem basically is cultural.
  - fulafel 8y ago
    It is the case further north too, where winter daylight is 0-3 hours.

captainmuon 8y ago

Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they are hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time. I think it would make much more sense to change the content of school during those years to reflect the interests of students better. Let them take a break, do something practical, do projects, etc. instead of trying to cram facts into their heads. A lot of stuff I headed to learn when I was 13 I learned easily 5 years later, and vice versa.

YokoZar 8y ago
> Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they are hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time. They literally are. And that time is later than adults. That's what circadean rhythms are.
- anticensor 8y ago
  If this difference exceeds two hours, they have a problem.
  - YokoZar 8y ago
    That difference may be delayed sleep phase syndrome, which affects about 1 in 7 teens. You can mitigate it around the edges with sleep hygiene, but even doing everything correctly they're still going to behind adults with earlier chronotypes.
robofd 8y ago
Agreed, but not everyone will take time to learn things later on. IMO, general level of education is important to fostering future curiosities.
emodendroket 8y ago
That they are "hardcoded" in this way is one of the major points of this piece. Changing the curriculum, whatever its merits or demerits, is not going to result in fewer teens dying in car crashes.

rerx 8y ago

One of the many fascinating facts I learnt from Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" is that the biorhythms of teenagers are shifted to later hours compared to those of adults in all human cultures of the globe, even in those rare societies hardly affected by technology. In evolution this was likely beneficial to make it easier for teenagers to socialize among themselves without adult disturbance, which was necessary to drive their tribe out of its ruts, to pioneer innovation and adaptation to changed conditions. In modern society we are stupid to undermine this by depriving the upcoming generation of their sleep.

sigi45 8y ago
Interesting idea :)
darkerside 8y ago
Just as likely that teenagers would then be able to stand watch for predators, attacks by other tribes, or hunt for nocturnal prey.
- rerx 8y ago
  Sure, having some variation in circadian rhythms among the members of a group makes it easier to have guards at most times of day and night. But such variation exists independently of age: There are "owls" and "larks" at all stages of life. I find it interesting that, on top of that, teenagers specifically and consistently have their individual rhythms shifted towards the later hours.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    That's a really interesting point I hadn't considered. And thanks to evolution's pseudorandom algorithm, it could be that the benefit was obtained in conjunction with another benefit (nighttime socializing), that one came about after the other, or that one exists and one doesn't.
- singularity2001 8y ago
  Can the purpose of this mechanism not be determined by observing hunter gatherers?

QML 8y ago

I wonder if it'd just be easier for high schools to convert over to a college model: students are free to pick courses corresponding to their preferred times, and to leave and enter campus on will. Of course, there will be incentives to consider -- why would a high schooler attend their classes if they're not paying directly out of pocket? In contrast, a school district would try to maximize the attendance rate as that's how funding works (at least in California). In hindsight, there's always a tension between high schoolers and those who administrate them; it's never a partnership since teenagers are quick to abuse / misuse a privilege.

rjbwork 8y ago
Drastically reduce administrators. Give the kids something like 25 to 50 cents per class attended.
- annywhey 8y ago
  Honestly, direct pay for attendance would be a great incentive for the poorest demographics. A few dollars can be make-or-break at the margin and even greedy parents that misuse the funds would end up wanting to get the kid showing up and not getting in fights - the bare minimum for a school day to go by undisturbed.
  - zo1 8y ago
    I'd be all for that, as long as there were negative penalties as well. E.g. Disturbing class = no points. Failing homework = no points. Failing test = losing all accumulated points. Failing end of year exams for the subject = lose all money for that subject. I.e. Attendance is only part of the equation, actually fostering learning/growth is what you really want, even if it's semi-artificial. Otherwise you're just making another perverse incentive for kids to keep their butts in the seat and not really engage. And then further on, only give the money back in the subsequent year, month to month. Make it a long-term commitment with a pay-off.
    - philwelch 8y ago

baxtr 8y ago

That’s probably a good reason to stick to wintertime in winter and not summertime (the EU decided to drop time ch ages 2x a year)

vinay427 8y ago
There isn't even a definite proposition yet for eliminating DST shifts. There is still a long way ahead for something like this to happen.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Half of my last year is dealing with bugs related to dst. It needs to go away completely. It is a stupid and unnecessary concept. The proposition is very simple "we won't be shifting the clock by an hour, deal with it"
  - wruza 8y ago
    If paid, half of your year may be worth having dst, if it turns out to be important. Hope they make their best decision, since it may affect too many things. Btw, did you deal with it or it’s still a mess? Long ago I wrote a library that manages dst, leaps, even ancient calendar changes, for fun. Datetime is hard topic, but still manageable. What problems did you meet, specifically?
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      No it wasn't worth it. I'd rather work on actual projects instead of fixing undocumented nuances related to poorly implemented systems. Yes I got paid for it, I'd rather not deal with a never ending set of database queries in a legacy system. Specifically one problem was consistently being given incorrect info from a vendor, then incorrect specs and data that would not match with the first. How do you compare a day with 25 vs 24 hours. Tldr: fuck dst, it has no purpose and should go away.

emodendroket 8y ago

> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and extracurricular clubs. Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is also a big reason for the low rate of young people having children commentators like to wring their hands about.

boomboomsubban 8y ago
>Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I've always been under the impression that start times were staggered for transportation reasons, as you can't drop everyone off at the same time. My experiences are limited to small towns, so I could be way off, but the differences seemed too small for sibling care to be the motive
- emodendroket 8y ago
  That means you have to do some kind of staggering. But the order is always older-younger, although younger kids are naturally awake earlier.
  - astura 8y ago
    The order is not always older-younger. That has not been my experience.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    So I looked at the CDC paper that seems to have influenced this article[1], the average start time for middle school is 8:04, and for high school 7:59. Elementary schools weren't sampled in it. A later journal article just sampling Kentucky[2] shows elementary starting at 8:05, middle at 8:00, and high school at 8:0:1. Elementary is also the most likely to start before 8, but their average was raised by ten percent starting after 9. There doesn't seem to be any forced order currently, and you'd likely see younger students get later starts as well. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm [2]https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start-times https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start....

another-cuppa 8y ago

But maybe not too much? My parents let me sleep. School started at 9:00 for me but on weekends and holidays I would sleep for more than ten hours and default to a >24 hour circadian rhythm. I would eventually become completely nocturnal which is kinda funny and considered typical for a geek like me, but it really messed up my mental health for a number of years afterwards. I wasn't able to maintain "normal" sleeping patterns until my late 20s.

unhammer 8y ago

I highly recommend the interview with "sleep diplomat" Matt Walker at http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker – I was scared into going to bed early at least :-)

lordnacho 8y ago

This teenager sleep cycle thing is a bit of a revelation to me. I thought I just had bad habits, but when I was that age, I'd play games most of the evening, maybe do one or two bits of homework at 10om, and then possibly stay up to 1am with some essay that I'd procrastinate on for ages. I'd wake up at something like 7am and sleep on the train until I got into school, and then sleep after getting home at about 4pm for an hour or two. It would have been a lot more comfortable getting in for maybe 10am and leaving at 5pm. I remember sometimes you'd have a special day in the week where there were no classes in the morning, meaning you started late. And then maybe an extra lesson or activity in the evening. But similar length of day, shifted, felt much better. Having worked for longer than I went to school for now, I think the school calendar needs an overhaul. There's no reason to take a huge holiday in the summer. In fact, why have any holiday at all? Just have school on all the time, and let people take holidays whenever they want, like at work. You won't forget things as easily taking week or two week holidays as against 8 week ones. Also it means parents won't have their holidays dictated by the school. Within the day, I also wonder about the frequency of context switches. You might be taking 6 classes a day: PE, French, Math, English, History, Physics. Now image you are coding, and you do this: Troubleshoot the rendering issue on the website, install a lock free ring on your trading system, write a SIMD function in CUDA, fix your cmake file dependencies, add unit tests to your CI script, and set up Kubernetes. Would you do those things one at a time, or in little pieces where you have to pick up where you left off arbitrarily? It seems you should have large blocks, maybe just morning and afternoon, rather than dozens of little classes each week. But then possibly as a teenager concentration is an issue, I don't know. I certainly think it's better to focus on one thing at a time, quite a long time, before changing contexts.

stephen_g 8y ago
Same thing when I was having massive sleep issues with years of constantly having symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation. Turned out I just had a condition called ‘delayed sleep phase disorder’. Being diagnosed and reading about sleep cycles was also a bit of a revelation to me. DSPD pretty much just means that as an adult I have a similar circadian rhythm to an adeloscent. As soon as I started regularly getting up at around 10am instead of 7-8am and just going to bed when I felt tired, all the symptoms disappeared, with no meds or anything. It’s lucky that I have a flexible workplace and a supervisor who has a kid with a sleep disorder, because the hardest thing about having this disorder is that it’s so hard for anybody with a normal cycle to understand how inflexible circadian rhythms are. You hear all sorts of BS about “you just need to be more disciplined”, etc. which just doesn’t work.

k__ 8y ago

I still sleep from 03:00 to 12:00 and I'm 33.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago
Similar here if left to my own devices, and I'm 40. I think we are a minority, though.
- k__ 8y ago
  On the other hand, this drove me to self-employment, which brings its own benefits, besides sleeping in.
- Const-me 8y ago
  I'm 36. We aren't necessarily a minority, it's possible most people would do it too if they could.

digitailor 8y ago

Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw. Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage was probably not the same as ours. (There is evidence of monogamistic tendencies in humans for a long time but that isn't synonymous with marriage.) Teenagers are biologically wired to want lots of sex and they tend to do it at night. I would put a lot of money on the fact that that hasn't changed in millennia. Obviously, this is a critical aspect of the process that allows for the continuation of the human race. Humans didn't have the consistent ability to wait to reproduce until 30 as is common now. And probably not the desire too; I can't see career-building interfering. The initial party must have ended pretty quickly. Poor ancient teeenagers. (Edit: considering this speculative is reasonable and factually correct. But speculating there's been behavior change is currently more speculative. What reason do we have to think teens had daytime sex in ancient times and our behavior has changed? What about for mature adults? Never heard of an existing tribal culture that mostly has sex during the day, and that's how we get much of our anthropological evidence. Humans tend to have sex at night, and the most fertile, desirious and energetic would be wired to spend more time at the time people have sex doing it: that would be selected for because of our primary biological directive. Is there a more logical evolutionary reason?)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
majos 8y ago
I'm not sure this is true. Yes, adolescence is when childbearing ability and the associated hormonal incentives start, but where is this "sex must happen at night" component coming from? If anything, I would guess that's a modern phenomenon being retrofitted onto the past.
- digitailor 8y ago
  I'd say visibility, permission avoidance, the excitement, and I'm sure there's more. Just like now, why would it have changed? For what specific reasons? Obviously spring and summer would be easier. I don't think that's retrofitting; I think we're continuing it still and the lack of recognition of that is confusing me. I'm positive they figured out how to have sex in the day as well when possible. But nomadic daytime marching would reduce opportunity, and in a hunting culture it would be harder to separate a woman because of daily gender-disparate activities. In a predominantly gatherer culture, perhaps it was easier.

unit91 8y ago

> Anyone who talks about sleep as if it’s some kind of inconvenience and getting less of it is a virtue should be challenged. These people are dangerous. This statement was bizarrely totalitarian. I actually agree with the fundamental premise that many schools probably start too early. But to say those who take the other side are dangerous people who need to be challenged? Too far. Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous!

qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
> Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous! Every, single social media platform, political show, talk show, no matter the side.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  EconTalk is good about not being like this.
- unit91 8y ago
  Undisputed and lamentable. I just didn't see it coming in paragraph 2 of a NY Times editorial on teenage sleep habits.
- kakarot 8y ago
  As Vi Hart explains here[0], it's critical that you establish enemies for your followers if you wish them to crusade for you. Playful banter and "agreeing to disagree" don't cut it. You have to dehumanize them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
In what sense is promoting an idea that leads to worse health outcomes and higher mortality not dangerous?

ricardobeat 8y ago

http://archive.is/ulQnm http://archive.is/ulQnm

speleding 8y ago

My daughter's school just changed all lessons to start an hour later for a few cohorts, as an experiment. My daughter likes that she gets to sleep longer. But it also means we don't get to see each other at breakfast, however brief that is. I'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each other will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would be for everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-)

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each other will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would be for everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-) As a teenager I would hate you for that :). Part of the reason I seem to be wired for night life since my teenage years is probably because that's the time everyone else is asleep, giving time to think, concentrate, enjoy experiences without interruptions, and generally not be interrupted by other people's random nonsense.

boulos 8y ago

This was actually an opinion piece a while back that seemingly got updated around the actual news [1]: Governor Brown vetoed the bill in California to start at 8:30 AM or later. [1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-time-vetoed-20180921-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-time-...

lngnmn1 8y ago

In asia, especially in rural areas, it is common to wake up early, between 5:30 and 6:00 and do a lot of things, including playing football, before reaching school at 9 am. And, you see, they are perfectly healthy and smart. Of course, almost everyone is going to bed about 9 or 10 pm. Failure to take into account cultural and social differences plague so-called studies all the time. Rice as the cause of health problems is another example. Almost 2/3 of humanity consume rice on a daily basis, sometimes few times per day.

RoutinePlayer 8y ago

F*ck that. What's next? Let them do cocaine!? [joke]

noobermin 8y ago

>Three out of every four students in grades 9 to 12 fail to sleep the minimum of eight hours that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for their age group Do 3/4 teens fail in life? Do they develop debilitating disorders and such? I guess I've heard for years we need more sleep yet we don't sleep and we continue living. May be certain things like stress and work are troublesome and such but that seems more like the issue than lack of sleep is.

yurishimo 8y ago
It’s not necessarily that they become failures but rather that they are being deprived of the mental capacity to reach their full potential every day. They would be more successful if they got more sleep, so it makes sense to give teens a couple more hours to benefit society as a whole, even if only marginally.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I don't think my point is clear so let me restate it. 75% is a majority of people. 75% of people aren't deficient in some way, as far as I know, staying up all night as teens and living a life didn't make them maladjusted or deprived in some sense. Moreover, I don't know or feel like there is evidence that high performers in society sleep more than anyone else. The whole "sleep more" mantra feels like the "eat less fat" mantra of the 90s which turned out to be not only false but detrimental to public health as fat became replaced by sugar.
  - ecnahc515 8y ago
    Just because you can't see if people are drastically affected in ways you perceive; especially years after the fact, doesn't mean it's not affecting people. It's just as possible the "high performers who don't sleep" are the least healthy people in society, and our society rewards unhealthy habits...oh wait...
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Just because a decision doesn't completely destroy the life of everyone affected does not make it a good decision.

hrasyid 8y ago

I'm not sure I like the reasoning in this article. They go to bed later because of FB and other stuff, which makes them not have enough sleep before school. Then it's the school, rather than the FB-ing that has to give way? If they wake up and start school later, what's to say their FB-ing won't shift even later, causing them to sleep even later, and then again we're back where we started?

ttul 8y ago
Teens ain’t on Facebook in my part of the globe. It’s all Instagram and Snapchat. The latest craze is multiparty live video where a couple of teens will broadcast themselves doing goofy stuff while all their friends watch remotely from their devices. It is a brave new world.
chillacy 8y ago
Because teenagers have delayed melatonin release even in controlled lab conditions: http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm

lamontcg 8y ago

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to bed, early to rise" and flat-out discriminate against people with sleep disorders. If you are an early riser, you should know that as someone with a sleep disorder I view "helpful" suggestions like "get some exercise" to be roughly equivalent to suggesting that gay people just need to pray the gay away. I'm never going to become an early riser. I've gotten in somewhat under control with melatonin, tweaks to diet and consistent scheduling, but I'm never going to hop out of bed at 6:30am and its always going to take me 2-3 hours to wake up.

devxpy 8y ago
THANK YOU
macspoofing 8y ago
>I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager Did you try going to sleep earlier? Who said you couldn't have 9.5 hours of sleep? The other thing you probably would have benefitted from is an afternoon nap (if you were unwilling to go to bed a 9pm). To blame others (those evil 55 year old early risers) is to deflect your own accountability. By the way, I was an early riser in high-schools and I preferred to get out at 3:30 rather than 5. Im sure teachers would prefer to be out earlier to be with their families (or to run extracurriculars). There is no solution that fits everyone so adjustments need to be made by eveybody.
- stormbrew 8y ago
  GP pretty much answered your question in the part of the quote you cut off.
- lamontcg 8y ago
  You literally failed to read every other word that I wrote.

nicolashahn 8y ago

My high school started at 7:45am, unless I had zero period, in which case it was 7am. Throughout the entire four years I was there, I was never able to get my sleep schedule to match up. I would wake up at 6am groggy, irritable, and stupid. This would not change throughout the day, and I'm sure many people thought I was just an idiotic asshole all the time. Sometimes I could catch a nap at lunch. After school, I would immediately pass out for 2-3 hours, and wake with tons of energy. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until around 2am because of this, and then the cycle continued. Now as an engineer with a much more flexible schedule that lets me sleep in, I'm a more attentive, happier, and smarter. I'm convinced that if I had gone to a school with a schedule that matched mine, I would have achieved much more.

butterfi 8y ago

This is nothing new. What's more irritating to me is that these articles generate lots of conversation, but not one school will adjust its hours. Put up or shut up.

lilgreenland 8y ago
They passed a law in CA a few weeks ago. All urban public schools must begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB328 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
- boulos 8y ago
  Yes, but then it was vetoed. See my other commment, or follow your link and click on status to see the Governor’s Veto Message.
rootusrootus 8y ago
Well, you're assuming that just because we think it might be better for the kids, we should automatically do it. Everything is a compromise, including school scheduling. In particular, for any households where both parents work, shifting school hours could be a serious burden. Easy for those of us who work in an office with a flexible schedule, or have a stay-at-home mom/dad, but we're in the minority.

vm 8y ago

School starts early because of parent work schedules.

pimmen 8y ago

I'm an early riser, always has been. My brother and mother are night owls but I somehow got my father's gene for getting up very early in the morning. All through high school I had a long walk to the train and had to get up at 6. I don't think I was ever late because of my tardiness. Today when I get to work at 8.30 I've already done my workout and some work on hobby stuff. This has been the case since my early 20s. On the flip side, staying up late at night is absolutely horrible. I love hackathons and have been to three of them with my colleagues this year and I'm always such a buzz kill when I have to get some sleep past midnight. I wake up and a lot of the best code has already been written by them. We're all different. I wish society was more adapted to people of all configurations, with more adaptable work schedules. And party schedules, even though missing out on them is not as bad as all the ways night owls are judged as lazy by ignorant people.

upveto 8y ago

This rings so true to me. Throughout high school I had the worst attendance record in the entire grade. For a few days after having stayed home, though, I was much sharper than the other sleepy kids. Then I started to feel tired again. Come on.

DenisM 8y ago

I was in a boarding school with hundreds of other teenagers. My classmates never* slept in (always attended the first class), and I’ve never seen anyone sleeping in from other classes/groups. We went to classes and were in a good shape, I don’t recall anyone complaining. There was one exception - a classmate that I believe was secretely drinking alcohol. Even for him it was an exception to sleep in. Also I’ve see the monitor looking for the sleepers, like that guy, so the problem was not entirely unknown. We were not selected based on our sleep, but on academic performance. This was long ago and we were poor enough to allow no electronic devices whatsoever, alcohol was forbidden, and lights-out were strictly enforced. Not much spare food either after dinner. The “teenage owl” thing has to be almost entirely environmental in order to explain my experience.

Zak 8y ago
What were the consequences (both formal and informal) if a student slept in? People can do things that are both unpleasant and harmful to them for extended periods of time if subjected to sufficient coercion, social pressure, or reward.
- DenisM 8y ago
  No one ever complained about poor performance due to lack of sleep the way modern-day "owls" do. I don't think it matters how they (we) were forced to observe the regime, only that it yielded the result - lark sleep and good performance for near 100% of students. My point is that the "owl" thing is environmental. To answer your question, tardy students would be admonished by the teacher/supervisor/monitor and possible written up. After several incidents (and several escalation layers in between) they would be expelled. Never happened in practice.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    You didn't mention when you woke up or when classes started. An hour can make a world of difference. Selection based on academic performance usually means above-average intelligence, which is still an asset when you're tired. It also means you were selected partly based on how well you dealt with your previous schools' start times. You mentioned this was long ago. The subject is better studied now and people are more aware of it. Even still, a lot of people insist it's a matter of discipline. Would it have been socially acceptable for someone to complain about it publicly or even among their friends? Did most have anything to compare it to?

golemiprague 8y ago

They can sleep in as much as they want if they go to sleep in the appropriate time. Teens don't have so much stuff to do, it is just that they want to go to sleep late because they must have just this extra hour of video gaming or texting. It is not really necessary.

topkai22 8y ago

One problem for adults in the US at least, the center of gravity for many institutions is on the East Coast, New York for finance or DC for the government. Huge numbers of people on the west coast start their workday at 6a or 7a to align to accommodate east coast peers or organizations. If the European settlement of the US had been done in reverse, I can easily see a world where Virginians are regularly staying at work till 8p because that’s when their customer is available.

honkycat 8y ago

Schools are daycare and not optimized for the students to learn. That is why they start early: so the parents can go to work

pkelly2505 8y ago

On my way to work today I saw a couple of school buses picking up students at about 6:45. Now if you think that's too early and we should have schools open later, I see a real problem. By law where I live, all traffic, in both directions, has to stop when school buses pick up kids. Put those buses on the road between 8:00 and 9:00 and the already horrible rush hour traffic would get way worse. Along with making everyone's commute longer, every school bus route would take longer. Students would have to be picked up earlier relative to the school's opening time to allow for the slower traffic.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

greggeter 8y ago

Serious question: why don't they just go to bed earlier?