US Study Finds Only 22.3% of Older Teens Get 7 Hours of Sleep

3 articles · Updated · Rochester Post Bulletin · May 12

A Pediatrics study analyzing national survey data from 1991-2023 found most US teenagers are not regularly getting enough sleep, with only a minority in 2021-2023 reporting seven or more hours a night.
Just 22.3% of 18- and 19-year-olds said they usually got at least seven hours, while even among 12- and 13-year-olds the share fell to 37.2% from more than 60% in the early 1990s.
Researchers said sleep shortfalls worsen with age and have widened by race, with Black adolescents less likely than white adolescents to report seven or more hours.
Possible drivers cited from other research include adolescent biology that favors later sleep schedules, early school start times, heavy nighttime screen use and stressors such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

As teen sleep declines, are we underestimating the long-term economic cost to the nation's future?

Beyond later school starts, what will it take to build a culture that truly values adolescent sleep?

Can the same technology blamed for sleepless nights be redesigned to solve teen exhaustion?