Oh, teenagers. They’re one of life’s great mysteries, aren’t they? Why do they do the crazy things they do has been a constant source of inspiration for scientists for many years now, and every so often, those scientists figure out a rational explanation for some crazy teen behavior that doesn’t boil down to hormones or a drive to be deliberately annoying. As it turns out, the teenage body is just very different from the adult body. When it comes to why teenagers are naturally prone to staying up all night, a scientific study conducted by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has concluded that it all boils down to a lack of blue light.
The problem is, teens go from early morning bus rides to school, then back home again. This doesn’t allow them to get the necessary burst of bright light in the morning that controls the circadian rhythm that tells the human body to go to sleep or wake up, thus throwing off the natural sleeping cycle. For every day teens are deprived of blue wavelength light, that throws off their sleep schedule by 6 minutes. At the end of a school week, they’re half-an-hour behind the school-mandated schedule of sleep. That kind of sleep deprivation adds up.
So, the culprit in kids sleeping in school is… the actual school. It’s not a surprise for anyone who remembers what school is like, what with the teen-unfriendly schedule and the reliance on horrible fluorescent lighting rather than natural light. Hmm, that might be why I have trouble staying awake at work (and why I come home with massive headaches).
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Tags: teenage nightowls, why teenagers stay up late, unusual health news, health studies, sleep studies, teenagers, circadian rhythm, blue light, human body, medical news, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute