Let the Teens Sleep

By Anne Miller:

Teens: They sleep too much and make poor decisions. Amirite?

Maybe not. Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that getting enough sleep — eight hours on average — benefits American teenagers in a host of ways, from boosting grades to literally keeping them alive

They tracked 9,000 students at eight high schools across several Western states and discovered that at the school in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where administrators pushed the morning start time back to 8:55 a.m., the school’s teen car accident rate plummeted a stunning

70 percent.

Considering that drivers in the 16- to 19-year-old age group are three times more likely than other drivers to get into accidents, and every day seven American teens die in car crashes in 2010, it’s a move worth paying attention to — and emulating.

The study, released this spring, also showed that the later the start time — which ranged from 7:30 a.m. to 8:55 a.m. — the more likely the kids were to pack in a solid eight hours of sleep before showing up for class. Almost 60 percent of kids enrolled at a school with an 8:35 a.m. start time logged at least eight hours of sleep, compared to just 34 percent of the students with a 7:30 a.m. start.