8 ms·

The impact of school shutdown on sleep in adolescents: a natural experiment

141 points by luu 6y ago

CameronNemo 6y ago
Little bit of a tangent, but I have adopted a novel alarm clock application called "Suntimes Alarms". This alarm clock is programmed according to an offset of solar events (for me the sunrise, but if you want something for noon or sunset that is possible). This recent DST was the smoothest transition in many years. Particularly because I was not beholden to a stringent work schedule. I was free to set my hours a bit more flexibly.
Drdrdrq 6y ago
N=45. Interesting idea though.
- clircle 6y ago
  N=45 is relatively high power for simple analyses, like a t-test (not sure if that's what the paper did). You can detect an effect size of 0.6 with 80% power when N is 45. You can also detect a effect of 0.7 with 90% power at N=45. There are other things that can make results unreliable, like p-hacking, but a sample size of 45 is not a sufficient condition for bad science.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    N=45 school-age children suggests that you had some serious problem with randomly selecting them; as does 32/45 girls (p<0.01) and 96% caucasian (p<0.005 against the general population of Montréal).
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      N=45 is ok. The demographics and gender don't represent current Montreal population, but I don't know how that affects this study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal
mavhc 6y ago
AIUI teenagers in USA start school early so they can reuse the same school buses for younger children, it's a cost cutting measure most of all
- pxeboot 6y ago
  That is unrelated to the school schedule. Most bus drivers aren't going to care if their routes start at 6, 7 and 8am or 8, 9 and 10am.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  There is also an issue of avoiding the 5pm rush hour when heading home.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  I agree that the proximal driver is cost cutting. But it’s largely tolerated because of the widespread cultural belief that waking up early is “character-building”. As if a late-shifted chronotype is a sign of laziness and sloth.
- discreditable 6y ago
  Also so students are at school before parents need to be at work. School is child care for a lot of parents.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    If our society took a chill pill with all the 'stranger danger' fear mongering, we could simply let kids walk themselves to school, as was once common not too long ago.
    - sneakernets 6y ago
      Where do you live that schools are still that close? some schools are up to 15 miles away from students.
      - 6y ago
rossdavidh 6y ago
So, I agree it's an interesting idea, and I think this small study could hopefully spur more conclusive ones, but... 1) N=45 2) based on "semi-structured phone interview" Neither of these is a deal-breaker, but what you'd really prefer is some sort of objective measure of sleep quantity, and how it impacted the person. Teenagers are, by and large, entirely aware that when adults ask them questions, they are likely to draw conclusions about policy towards teenagers. They want to sleep later. How likely is it that they would admit it, if they didn't really get any more sleep out of this? Not saying it's not true, or that it isn't an interesting idea to try to put this "natural experiment" to work somehow, but I'm not sure this is really enough to draw any conclusions, and I actually already agreed with their conclusion before seeing this study. A better method might be to compare home-school students to public schools, or compare summer-break to school year, and to use some more objective metric than a phone interview.
- rcar 6y ago
  Agreed with all points. I often find that these sorts of observational studies with weak methods that provide evidence for something the unblinded study participants would want to support (e.g., this study, observational studies of the effect of reduced workweek hours on productivity, many of the observational basic income studies) are really hard to evaluate fairly. It becomes easy to latch onto the conclusions when the intervention is one you're predisposed to believe in and to latch onto the methodological weaknesses when it's one you start of opposed towards, and so I feel like they don't really advance science forward at all.
  - danmcs 6y ago
    I think it's useful to think of studies like this as a MVP. They're relatively cheap and fast. If they give a null result, you've failed fast. If they give a non-null, then you can invest in further study and iterate.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      As opposed to a MVP, such study can give you any results you want.
toyg 6y ago
I wonder if the youthful predilection for “sleep late, be active in the late evening” is some sort of evolutionary adaptation. Night raids, the young being tasked with the most annoying night-shifts... All pure speculation, but there must be something more than “kids are lazy and then they ‘grow’ out of it” - if anything because some people (cough cough) never actually do.
- agency 6y ago
  I think the simple answer is just that children need more sleep than adults. It’s not just about a different schedule. The National Sleep Foundation recommends[1] 9-11 hours for school-aged children and 8-10 for teenagers. [1] https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(15)00015-7/fulltext https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(15)000...
- lparm 6y ago
  Actually your speculation is a good one. From the book Why we sleep, by Matthew Walker, it's reported that teenager's circadian rhythm is different from the one of their younger siblings. It's shifted progressively forward, so forward that it passes even the timing of adults. This is something wired in their brain and should be addressed when setting school times. Moreover, Walker also proposes a socio-evolutionary explanation of why adolescent sleep schedule is shifted: "Central to the goal of adolescent development is the transition from parental dependence to independence, all the while learning to navigate the complexities of peer-group relationships and interactions. One way in which Mother Nature has perhaps helped adolescents unbuckle themselves from their parents is to march their circadian rhythms forward in time, past that of their adult mothers and fathers. This ingenious biological solution selectively shifts teenagers to a later phase when they can, for several hours, operate independently—and do so as a peer-group collective. It is not a permanent or full dislocation from parental care, but as safe an attempt at partially separating soon-to-be adults from the eyes of Mother and Father. There is risk, of course. But the transition must happen. And the time of day when those independent adolescent wings unfold, and the first solo flights from the parental nest occur, is not a time of day at all, but rather a time of night, thanks to a forward-shifted circadian rhythm." edit: putted a little more space in between sentences
hikerclimb 6y ago
Hopefully kids in us get horrible sleep because of pandemic and fall behind.
macawfish 6y ago
The sadists among us simply wouldn't let this happen. We must be disciplined.
- swiley 6y ago
  School being miserable, largely useless, and a huge time sink just makes sense to most Americans. Teach kids formal logic/CS, assign reasonable homework, and have them get up at reasonable times? Nah!
opal9 6y ago
was hoping they analyzed change in social media usage somehow and estimated change in sleep patterns from that
vl 6y ago
In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school. Ironically, similar thing happens to me, but sadly there is nobody to take away my phone, as time of this comment shows.
- clon 6y ago
  Anecdotal evidence, but in my school the afternoon shift was associated with more "problematic" behaviour, both boys and girls. More rough and tumble play, that is the technical term I think, more abuse and fighting. Might have something to do with all those mornings without parental supervision.
- Kbelicius 6y ago
  > As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school. When talking about adolescents, which this study does, this is false since in adolescents the sleep phase is biologically delayed.
  - scatters 6y ago
    Biologically delayed relative to what? Circadian rhythms have to be cued off some external driver, whether that's daylight hours, mealtimes or whatever.
    - Kbelicius 6y ago
      > Biologically delayed relative to what? Relative to humans at others stages of development. > Circadian rhythms have to be cued off some external driver, whether that's daylight hours, mealtimes or whatever. Yes, and our bodies react differently to those cues depending on our stage of development.

141 points by luu 6y ago

Little bit of a tangent, but I have adopted a novel alarm clock application called "Suntimes Alarms". This alarm clock is programmed according to an offset of solar events (for me the sunrise, but if you want something for noon or sunset that is possible). This recent DST was the smoothest transition in many years. Particularly because I was not beholden to a stringent work schedule. I was free to set my hours a bit more flexibly.

Drdrdrq 6y ago

N=45. Interesting idea though.

clircle 6y ago
N=45 is relatively high power for simple analyses, like a t-test (not sure if that's what the paper did). You can detect an effect size of 0.6 with 80% power when N is 45. You can also detect a effect of 0.7 with 90% power at N=45. There are other things that can make results unreliable, like p-hacking, but a sample size of 45 is not a sufficient condition for bad science.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  N=45 school-age children suggests that you had some serious problem with randomly selecting them; as does 32/45 girls (p<0.01) and 96% caucasian (p<0.005 against the general population of Montréal).
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    N=45 is ok. The demographics and gender don't represent current Montreal population, but I don't know how that affects this study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Montreal

mavhc 6y ago

AIUI teenagers in USA start school early so they can reuse the same school buses for younger children, it's a cost cutting measure most of all

pxeboot 6y ago
That is unrelated to the school schedule. Most bus drivers aren't going to care if their routes start at 6, 7 and 8am or 8, 9 and 10am.
rossdavidh 6y ago
There is also an issue of avoiding the 5pm rush hour when heading home.
dcolkitt 6y ago
I agree that the proximal driver is cost cutting. But it’s largely tolerated because of the widespread cultural belief that waking up early is “character-building”. As if a late-shifted chronotype is a sign of laziness and sloth.
discreditable 6y ago
Also so students are at school before parents need to be at work. School is child care for a lot of parents.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  If our society took a chill pill with all the 'stranger danger' fear mongering, we could simply let kids walk themselves to school, as was once common not too long ago.
  - sneakernets 6y ago
    Where do you live that schools are still that close? some schools are up to 15 miles away from students.
    - 6y ago

rossdavidh 6y ago

So, I agree it's an interesting idea, and I think this small study could hopefully spur more conclusive ones, but... 1) N=45 2) based on "semi-structured phone interview" Neither of these is a deal-breaker, but what you'd really prefer is some sort of objective measure of sleep quantity, and how it impacted the person. Teenagers are, by and large, entirely aware that when adults ask them questions, they are likely to draw conclusions about policy towards teenagers. They want to sleep later. How likely is it that they would admit it, if they didn't really get any more sleep out of this? Not saying it's not true, or that it isn't an interesting idea to try to put this "natural experiment" to work somehow, but I'm not sure this is really enough to draw any conclusions, and I actually already agreed with their conclusion before seeing this study. A better method might be to compare home-school students to public schools, or compare summer-break to school year, and to use some more objective metric than a phone interview.

rcar 6y ago
Agreed with all points. I often find that these sorts of observational studies with weak methods that provide evidence for something the unblinded study participants would want to support (e.g., this study, observational studies of the effect of reduced workweek hours on productivity, many of the observational basic income studies) are really hard to evaluate fairly. It becomes easy to latch onto the conclusions when the intervention is one you're predisposed to believe in and to latch onto the methodological weaknesses when it's one you start of opposed towards, and so I feel like they don't really advance science forward at all.
- danmcs 6y ago
  I think it's useful to think of studies like this as a MVP. They're relatively cheap and fast. If they give a null result, you've failed fast. If they give a non-null, then you can invest in further study and iterate.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    As opposed to a MVP, such study can give you any results you want.

toyg 6y ago

I wonder if the youthful predilection for “sleep late, be active in the late evening” is some sort of evolutionary adaptation. Night raids, the young being tasked with the most annoying night-shifts... All pure speculation, but there must be something more than “kids are lazy and then they ‘grow’ out of it” - if anything because some people (cough cough) never actually do.

agency 6y ago
I think the simple answer is just that children need more sleep than adults. It’s not just about a different schedule. The National Sleep Foundation recommends[1] 9-11 hours for school-aged children and 8-10 for teenagers. [1] https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(15)00015-7/fulltext https://www.sleephealthjournal.org/article/S2352-7218(15)000...
lparm 6y ago
Actually your speculation is a good one. From the book Why we sleep, by Matthew Walker, it's reported that teenager's circadian rhythm is different from the one of their younger siblings. It's shifted progressively forward, so forward that it passes even the timing of adults. This is something wired in their brain and should be addressed when setting school times. Moreover, Walker also proposes a socio-evolutionary explanation of why adolescent sleep schedule is shifted: "Central to the goal of adolescent development is the transition from parental dependence to independence, all the while learning to navigate the complexities of peer-group relationships and interactions. One way in which Mother Nature has perhaps helped adolescents unbuckle themselves from their parents is to march their circadian rhythms forward in time, past that of their adult mothers and fathers. This ingenious biological solution selectively shifts teenagers to a later phase when they can, for several hours, operate independently—and do so as a peer-group collective. It is not a permanent or full dislocation from parental care, but as safe an attempt at partially separating soon-to-be adults from the eyes of Mother and Father. There is risk, of course. But the transition must happen. And the time of day when those independent adolescent wings unfold, and the first solo flights from the parental nest occur, is not a time of day at all, but rather a time of night, thanks to a forward-shifted circadian rhythm." edit: putted a little more space in between sentences

hikerclimb 6y ago

Hopefully kids in us get horrible sleep because of pandemic and fall behind.

macawfish 6y ago

The sadists among us simply wouldn't let this happen. We must be disciplined.

swiley 6y ago
School being miserable, largely useless, and a huge time sink just makes sense to most Americans. Teach kids formal logic/CS, assign reasonable homework, and have them get up at reasonable times? Nah!

opal9 6y ago

was hoping they analyzed change in social media usage somehow and estimated change in sleep patterns from that

vl 6y ago

In Soviet Union and then Russia there was not enough school capacity. So schools worked in two shifts. Half of my school years I started school at 1pm. Wasn’t that bad, I actually preferred it. As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school. Ironically, similar thing happens to me, but sadly there is nobody to take away my phone, as time of this comment shows.

clon 6y ago
Anecdotal evidence, but in my school the afternoon shift was associated with more "problematic" behaviour, both boys and girls. More rough and tumble play, that is the technical term I think, more abuse and fighting. Might have something to do with all those mornings without parental supervision.
Kbelicius 6y ago
> As for “natural sleep cycle” and “improved quality” I can tell you that this is self-made (or rather parent-made) problem in this case. If I take my children’s devices away at 8pm, then they go to bed by themselves after 9, have a good sleep and ready for school. When talking about adolescents, which this study does, this is false since in adolescents the sleep phase is biologically delayed.
- scatters 6y ago
  Biologically delayed relative to what? Circadian rhythms have to be cued off some external driver, whether that's daylight hours, mealtimes or whatever.
  - Kbelicius 6y ago
    > Biologically delayed relative to what? Relative to humans at others stages of development. > Circadian rhythms have to be cued off some external driver, whether that's daylight hours, mealtimes or whatever. Yes, and our bodies react differently to those cues depending on our stage of development.